“No child should be locked in an immigration detention center,” reads an open letter signed by a growing list of Hollywood stars, physicians, policy experts, and organizations demanding the “immediate closure” of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Hundreds of children, teenagers, and their parents have been held at the remote facility that has drawn mounting scrutiny over reports of its dehumanizing conditions.
The letter also calls on the federal government and private prison operator CoreCivic to “return children and families to the homes and communities they were taken from and to end child imprisonment now.” Madonna, Pedro Pascal, John Legend, Gracie Abrams, Jane Fonda, Keke Palmer, Lance Bass, Cynthia Nixon, Diego Luna, Maren Morris, Mark Ruffalo, America Ferrera, Ben Stiller, Ramy Youssef, Riley Keough, and dozens of Hollywood leaders have signed the letter, which is open for public signatures on Change.org. As of press, the petition has garnered over 12,700 signatures.
The celebrities have backed the efforts of popular children’s educator Ms. Rachel, who made headlines earlier this month for meeting with detained children on video chat and using her platform to call for the closure of ICE’s notorious family detention center. Additional signees of the letter include Katie Couric, Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, Brittney Griner, Elliot Page, Brandi Carlile, Diego Luna, Elizabeth Banks, Eva Longoria, Illana Glazer, John Cusack, Natasha Lyonne, Josh Dela Cruz, Lena Dunham, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Muna, Sara Barielles, and more.
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“Children held in immigration detention endure trauma, neglect and conditions that violate basic standards of health, safety, dignity and human rights,” reads the open letter. “The harms of detaining children are known and well documented. Court filings of abuse against children have included refusals to provide clean water, rotten food contaminated with worms, dangerous medical neglect, sleep deprivation, denial of legal counsel, the separation of children from their families, and retaliation against families protesting the inhumane conditions. Children belong in schools and on playgrounds, not in detention centers.”
The center was opened by the Obama administration in 2014, then closed by the Biden administration in 2024. Last spring, Trump’s White House’s reopened the facility as part of a $45 billion immigration detention expansion. Since the start of the second Trump administration, the number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention on a given day has skyrocketed, jumping more than sixfold.
