Luggage Tags (2018)
This work was created for the New Sanctuary Coalition “Suitcase March” to protest ongoing deportations and family separation by immigration enforcement. The “Suitcase March” took place on July 26, 2018 at 26 Federal Plaza, the headquarters for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New York and included installation and performance works.
ICE Air Operations (IAO) is the official name that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has assigned to the program that transports and deports people. These imagined luggage tags and IAO logo shine a light on the true impact of ICE’s Air Operations program, revealing the pristine language and commercial luxury as cover-ups for the violent force of separation and deportation. Rally participants were encouraged to fill out blank tags and hang on display around immigration headquarters.
Images from Instagram users @janiceginger1 and @casacanela101.
The accompanying text from the rally is below.
ICE Air Operations (IAO): In the service of white nationalism since 2003
ICE Air Operations (IAO) is the name that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gives to the program that transports and deports people. An “arm” within ICE, IAO utilizes contracts with commercial and charter airlines to move children and adults around the United States and to deport them. This means either using an entire airplane for deportations or flying children and adults on domestic and international commercial flights with other passengers, like you.
Airlines that work with IAO include commercial airlines, like United, American, Frontier, and Southwest, as well as charter airlines, Swift Air and Xtra Airways.
The imagined IAO logo and luggage tags are designed to call attention to the false legitimacy that ICE and DHS seek to create in this brand in order to disguise the unnecessary violence of detention and deportation. The irony of these tags calls out the hypocrisy of this fascist institution: A brand name and an in-flight meal does not distract us from the fact that the ICE is removing people from their home, their families, and safety.
We encourage you to take these tags and do the near impossible—write in the name of a loved one you could not imagine losing to detention or deportation. Writing in a name helps those who are spared this reality share in the pain and terror that many of our immigrant friends face. This emotional state keeps us from normalizing ICE’s aggression and violence—exactly what the IAO brand would have us do. Furthermore, it strengthens our resolve to bring back anyone who has been transported away from their home and family by ICE Air Operations.
The average cost of ICE Air flights is $7,785 per hour. “[From October 2010 to March 2014], ICE Air spent nearly $600 million, which is greater than what was spent on the National Endowment for the Arts over the same period,” (Time). This is where your tax dollars are going. Companies you pay for air travel are profiting off of detention and deportation. Tell them you do not accept to sit on flight that is effecting family separation.
Let ICE, airline companies, and fellow passengers know that you won’t allow family separation and deportations to happen in the shadows. Join us in shining a light on these agressions and demanding that our community and family members be brought home.
