Madonna, Pedro Pascal and Maren Morris are among the celebrities who have signed an open letter demanding the “immediate closure” of the Dilley Immigration Processing Centre in Texas.
Hundreds of young children, teenagers, and their parents have been held at the remote facility that has drawn mounting scrutiny over reports of its dehumanising conditions.
“No child should be locked in an immigration detention centre,” reads the letter signed by a growing list of Hollywood stars, medics, policy experts and other organisations.
The letter 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, Pascal and Morris were joined in their plea by other stars including John Legend, Gracie Abrams, America Ferrera, Jane Fonda, Riley Keough, Diego Luna, Cynthia Nixon, Keke Palmer, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Stiller and Ramy Youssef.
The petition is open for signatures on Change.org and at the time of writing has gathered more than 13,900 signatures.
“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. “Children belong in schools and on playgrounds, not in detention centres.”
The centre was opened by the Obama administration in 2014, then closed by the Biden administration in 2024. Last spring, Trump’s White House reopened the facility as part of a $45 billion (£34 billion) immigration detention expansion. Since the start of the second Trump administration, the number of children in ICE detention on a given day has jumped more than sixfold.
