In recent hours, posters have appeared along several streets in Los Angeles with photos of the many people who have disappeared in raids by immigration agents. The posters bear red lettering at the top such as “Missing Mother” or “Missing Child,” and at the bottom a caption in black that reads “Abducted by ICE.”
Some of the faces on the posters are familiar to anyone who has followed the events. Among those portrayed, for example, is Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in March without a hearing, in what the Trump administration has admitted was a mistake. “Did not receive constitutional protections. Currently being held in detention,” the flyer reads.
Gladis Yolanda Chávez Pineda, a woman from Chicago, was also featured on the posters. She had come to the United States in search of a better life for her daughter and was applying for asylum. “Lived in the United States for 10 years,” her poster read. “No criminal history.”
The posters proved particularly effective. Taped between ads of various kinds, they reminded passersby of the story of these people whose lives were ruined by the repression promoted by the federal administration. The posters were made by two local young men, Ben and Sebastien, ages 28 and 31.
“I just wanted to reframe this idea of immigrants as criminals, and put into perspective that these are people – this is someone’s grandmother, this is someone’s father, this is someone’s son,” said Ben to The Guardian, “people started taking photos, and I had a moment with this one elderly woman where she was looking at it, and she really just started tearing up. At that moment, I was like, ‘OK, this is actually connecting to people.’”
“I moved here from Colombia 14 years ago, and ever since the first Trump administration, I’ve seen my community being attacked,” Sebastien added, “So as soon as I saw these posters that my friend was doing, that I felt something in me that needed to go out and help.”
In some cases, the posters were accompanied by some writing that played with the acronym of ICE, which has been renamed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Illegal Country-wide Embarrassment or Induce Community Extinction. Other flyers, however, advertised the “No Kings” protests, while still others carried the slogan “Undocumented Hands Feed You,” with an illustration of a person working in a field.
The posters were just the latest form of protest affecting Los Angeles. In recent days, thousands of people have taken to the streets, demonstrating against anti-immigration raids sponsored by the Trump administration. To quell the riots, the president decided to deploy the National Guard and hundreds of marines to the city.
