Children's Entertainer Ms. Rachel Visits Immigration Detention Facility, Questions Separation of Families

Rachel Griffin Accurso, known to her audience as Ms. Rachel, spent Monday at a volunteer hospitality tent outside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility operated by the GEO Group, where she played with children, sang songs, and heard accounts of separated families. She shared Instagram posts — one of which received over 60,000 likes — describing meeting a 13-year-old girl whose father, a truck driver who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years, missed her birthday while detained, and a nonverbal brother with a disability who needs his father home. The following day, Accurso traveled to Washington, D.C., delivering more than 500 handwritten letters and drawings from children to members of Congress from both parties, framing the issue as nonpartisan. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson disputed claims of family separation, stating that ICE gives parents the option of removal with their children or placement with a designated safe person, and pushed back on broader allegations of abuse at the facility. The visit coincided with New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill's first granted access to the facility, which she described as a closely controlled tour that did not allow her to speak with detainees. More than 80 people have been arrested in connection with protests at Delaney Hall since late May, and New Jersey's attorney general has filed suit against GEO Group seeking to compel health inspections of the facility. Accurso, who has previously advocated for children at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas and for children in Gaza, said she embraced being called political, stating that believing every child deserves care is itself a political stance.