There are some new billboards in town that want you to know what the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is doing with its newfound funding.
“Your tax $ wasted” reads the top of these billboards that can be found around L.A. and in several other cities around the country, including Memphis, Miami and Raleigh, N.C.
Other messages found on the signs are: “ICE weapons spending increases 600%, 17 million people lose healthcare;” “ICE cruelty is costing you $28 billion;” and “Funding ICE is a slippery slope to fascism.”
The coordinated action was put together by the activist group Mijente Support Committee, a Latinx rights advocacy group whose ethos is “no one is coming to save us, so we have to save ourselves and each other.”
Joseline Garcia — who serves as Mijente’s community defense director, as well as community defense training for L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s first district — spoke with The Times about the advocacy organization’s billboard campaign.
“Over the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in the use of billboards for social and political messaging, including some recent pro-ICE billboards,” Garcia said. “At the same time, with tax season approaching and very little public awareness about how much money is spent on ICE, we felt it was important to engage in the narrative battle and use billboards as the primary medium for this campaign.”
Of the more than 200 billboards part of the nationwide action, nine have been placed throughout L.A. First revealed the week of March 2, the billboards will be displayed through the end of the month.
Several of the signs feature intense images of ICE officials detaining people, including one that shows agents putting a man in a choke hold.
“That is the reality of the situation that we’re in. We’re in a moment where you have this agency that’s being reckless, is out of control and is attacking people,” Garcia said. “ It’s violating [Latinos], terrorizing us and our children. And it’s not just immigrants — it’s anyone who’s brown and anyone who is standing up for their neighbors.”
She added that the point of the billboards is to “provoke a reaction” so as to ensure that people don’t desensitize themselves to the ongoing situation.
The signs further ask for spectators to continue to educate themselves about what the cost of ICE is by pointing people toward the website ICECostsUs.com. There, the organization provides research-backed findings about what taxpayers’ money is being redirected to and from.
These statistics further suggest that, as Americans have subsidized ICE, their healthcare premiums continue to skyrocket, their savings have declined and their grocery bills have gone up. All of this coincides with data showing that nearly three-fourths of ICE detainees over the last year have no criminal record.
“We’re seeing this administration find the funds to be able to terrorize its people, but not actually ensure that our people have the ability to just live right and that’s like the most basic thing,” Garcia said.
But education isn’t the only goal of the campaign, Garcia hoped the messaging would encourage people to get involved.
“[Organizers] in council district one are going to direct folks to learn more about our community defense program so that we can organize them and get them trained on how to do rapid response and mutual aid,” she said.
While advocating for more people to get involved, she also acknowledged that part of the Trump administration’s immigration tactic is to overwhelm the population.
“They are able to instill fear and utilize agencies to terrorize us to keep us in check and in debt… [and] make it so unaffordable to live here that all we can do is work multiple jobs to barely have a life,” Garcia stated. “Now we’re exhausted, we’re confused, we’re overwhelmed and it’s just meant to keep us in our lane right as they get a ton of profits.”
She pointed to the immigration operation in Minneapolis earlier this year — which resulted in the killings of two U.S. citizens — as an example of how federal agents have leveraged terror and chaos on a national scale. But she also highlighted a recent local case that affected the L.A. district she works in.
“We’re grieving the passing of a man named Alberto Gutierrez-Reyeswho who just passed away in ICE detention. He was someone that our rapid response team responded to when he was detained,” Garcia noted.
The 48-year-old Mexican national was detained in January and sent to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County. The father and husband died at a local hospital after repeated cries for help were ignored by the Adelanto staff, according to his family.
“There’s a real level of fear that the public is navigating because it is life or death,” Garcia added.
Mijente’s billboard campaign isn’t the only sign project that’s going on in the Greater L.A. area dedicated to calling out ICE activity.
Since November, the Inland Empire organization Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice — which provides the IE immigrant community with legal support and resources — has been displaying signs around the region that read “ICE stole someone here.”
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