Artists from collective of activists Indecline in San Francisco’s Bay Area turned to guerrilla methods to defend children of immigrants
Billboard targeted by Indecline art collective. Source: Indecline/Artnet
To protest against the separation of immigrant families on the US border due to Trump’s decrees, activists climbed up to a Got Junk billboard and altered it so that it now criticises the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A video released by the art group shows three masked, hooded people transforming the billboard depicting a screaming child and the slogan “Got Junk?”. They worked for an hour using a ladder and long-handled paint rollers to change the phone number, turn the slogan “We make junk disappear” into “We make kids disappear” and write the signature “I.C.E.”, Mercury News reports.
The billboard owned by ClearChannel was removed later, the artists say.
According to Artnet, immigration is a hot theme in the US due to the controversial “zero tolerance” policy carried out by Trump’s administration. Due to requirements to arrest all immigrants trying to get asylum in the US, ICE has to separate children from their parents under the Flores settlement, which prohibits imprisoning children for extended periods of time.
Under pressure to end family separation, Trump has signed a decree proposing to amend the settlement and imprison entire families for an indefinite period of time. Since the US authorities began to apply the “zero tolerance” policy, 2,300 children have been separated from their families. Many families are still separated.
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