It is often said that when the purpose of something is not understood, abuse becomes inevitable, and that appears to be the case with ICE. With this in mind, Ms. Rachel had a chat with a 9-year-old held at the Dilley ICE detention center in Texas, who just wanted to attend the spelling bee he obviously had been planning and looking forward to.
Ms. Rachel spoke to the child on a video call, and the emotional exchange was posted on Instagram. “Do you really miss your school and your friends?” she asked the boy, Deiver, who responded, “Very much. I want to be there, to be happy. I miss all of them.” The 9-year-old expressed his dislike for the facility and pleaded emphatically, “If you could help us to leave this. I don’t want to be here anymore. Nothing’s good here.” Ms. Rachel reassured the child that some people were working on getting him out.
“I wanna go to the spelling bee,” Diever confessed, “When I eat the food from here, my stomach hurts,” he added. Another woman on the call told the boy that his classmates and his school had missed him as well, struggling to hide her tears. “I wish I could leave before the spelling bee,” Diever noted.
Netizens were so emotional after watching the clip and expressed their emotions in the comments. “This baby just wants to go to the spelling bee 😭,” one cried. “Babies. Babies in prison. May God forgive us for allowing this,” another noted. “SMH. This is bad. There’s a group of children who the government is hurting now. KARMA will not be kind!” one user wrote. “We have failed him. Thank you for using your platform to share his story,” another said of Ms. Rachel.
Many users lamented what ICE’s operations had come to. “ICE is inhumane. This has to stop. We sit by & watch children being traumatized. What has become of the United States of America?” one asked. “ICE lied to us! They say they are going after bad people, are we supposed to be afraid of children?” a second one noted. “There is NOTHING a child can do to deserve this. NOTHING,” another wrote.
“This is unbelievable, future generations won’t forgive us for allowing this to happen,” a netizen noted. “This is not the America I know. We must do better,” another lamented. “Everyday those in charge are demonstrating their incompetence and wickedness,” a user stated, and another added, “We aren’t mad enough. This is so heartbreaking. No child deserves this.”
