Outside an entrance to the Second Avenue subway station in Manhattan’s East Village, commuters and passersby are confronted with an artwork portraying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detaining the Statue of Liberty.
Longtime New York City street artist Doug Groupp, who uses the moniker Clown Soldier, created “Attack on Liberty” on November 26. The black and white spray-painted work binds immigration crackdowns to an erosion of civil liberties more broadly. Reached by Hyperallergic, Groupp said he was paid $120 to create the work, but declined to state by whom.
“It visualizes a fear shared by millions: that the values we claim to stand for — justice, sanctuary, and freedom — are being detained and carried off in plain sight,” Groupp said in a statement. “It’s a reminder that freedom is never guaranteed; it must be defended.”
Groupp’s scene of ICE arresting the Statue of Liberty punctuates a particularly notorious year in United States immigration history, one defined by the arrest of a pro-Palestinian student protester and green card holder, Mahmoud Khalil; the deportation of hundreds of men to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador; and the targeting of immigrants with no criminal history…