They appear tied to light poles and trees, taped to storefronts and random structures.
The laminated paper signs read “ICE secuestró alguien aquí” or “ICE kidnapped someone here.”
A date and time of the federal immigration arrest is written in marker.
Below that: 855-435-7693, the phone number of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights support hotline for people to report other arrests or to seek assistance if they know someone taken by federal authorities.
The signs appeared in late October across the Southwest Side, which was heavily targeted under President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation effort dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” that began in early September.
Sarita Hernandez and Selva Zafiro, co-founders of Marimacha Monarca Press in McKinley Park, were working at a community art event when members of the Southwest Rapid Response team — part of the immigrant coalition — approached them with an idea.
The response team sought the art collective’s help to ensure the gravity of the unprecedented surge in immigration arrests isn’t forgotten.
The signs intentionally resemble the temporary no parking or tow zone signs familiar to Chicagoans.
“It serves as a made-you-look kind of intervention, but then what it actually is doing is documenting something that permanently has impacted many of our communities, has permanently changed people’s lives, has permanently ripped apart families,” Hernandez said.
Marimacha Monarca Press has printed at least 100 signs and plans to keep printing more until rapid response teams no longer request them.
Dozens of signs have been placed throughout Archer Heights, Back of the Yards and Brighton Park, said Karina Martinez with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which is part of Southwest Rapid Response.
Other artists have caught on to the effort and designed similar signs that have appeared in some North and Northwest Side neighborhoods. Those signs are headed with a Chicago flag and the word “Emergency” and below read “ICE abducted someone here,” along with a date and time, and the same phone number.
The feds have scaled back “Operation Midway Blitz,” which brought about 250 immigration agents to Chicago. U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino and 150 agents left town this month after eight weeks of chaotic arrests that led to agents routinely using tear gas and pepper balls against protesters.
The Department of Homeland Security has not released a full account of how many people were detained during its increased activity between early September and mid-November. A DHS spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A lawyer for the National Immigrant Justice Center has said more than 3,000 people were arrested. The exact number of people who have been released, deported or remain in custody is unclear.
A Chicago federal appeals court recently put a temporary hold on a judge’s order that would have released up to 615 people detained by immigration authorities this year. Those detainees come from a list of about 1,800 people arrested by ICE in the Chicago area between June 11 and Oct. 7, according to Mark Fleming, an attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
Despite the feds’ curtailment, Martinez said there were still plenty the community is sorting through.
“This project was not necessarily to make people feel that there’s a danger in being outside but making sure that we’re making space to remember folks,” Martinez said.
“Let’s remember that there’s actual people who are impacted by these policies and these are families that are being impacted. This is someone’s dad, someone’s mom, someone’s child. And their presence being lacked in their community has an impact,” she said.
The signs appear similar to other remembrance sites throughout history, like the Stolpersteine stones across Europe that memorialize victims of the Holocaust at their last-known residence. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project has been installing brick-shaped glass memorials in sidewalks throughout Chicago where those killings a century ago occurred, as reported recently by the Sun-Times.
“That kind of public sign posting of injustice — that occurs to me as a parallel in Germany to what these people who are putting up these signs are trying to get people to notice,” said Peter Hayes, a history professor at Northwestern University who studies Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Martinez, with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, says the endeavor to tag spots where ICE has taken people was inspired by similar efforts in other cities, including Portland and Washington, D.C.
They started posting them around Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
“I think it was very intentional for us to take up space and bring awareness to people who have been taken and recognize that families are missing their loved ones,” Martinez said. “Maybe not in similar ways in that they have passed, but they are no longer together with their family.”