The ICE plaque is gone.<\/p>\n
The fake but authentic-looking Pennsylvania historic marker, erected by two artists who sought to ruefully commemorate a local immigration arrest, disappeared from its post in Philadelphia sometime Monday.<\/p>\n
Huston West, one of the artists, said he was walking his dog around 1 p.m. when he noticed that the sign was absent from its spot on Fairmount Avenue near Fifth Street<\/a>. A neighbor told him the plaque had been there earlier in the day.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s lame,\u201d West said of the sign being removed. \u201cBut it got a lot of coverage while it was up.\u201d<\/p>\n West said he could only speculate on who may have taken the marker \u2015 he suspected conservative opponents, people who had criticized the sign on social media, or maybe even the city government.<\/p>\n A city spokesperson said he would check.<\/p>\n This particular, familiar-looking blue-and-yellow marker, similar to the ones that commemorate important people, places, and events in communities across Pennsylvania, was put up at the site of a Feb. 16 ICE arrest.<\/p>\n That morning, masked agents descended on a Gopuff<\/a> delivery driver who had pulled over to make a quick drop-off in Northern Liberties<\/a>. After he was taken into custody, the car remained behind for days, set two feet from the curb in an accessible parking space, its hazard lights blinking until the battery died.<\/p>\n West and a fellow artist who goes by the name Emeyewhisky wondered what had happened to the driver, and created a plaque bearing the header \u201cICE Kidnapping and Ghost Car.\u201d<\/p>\n The ghost car terminology borrows from ghost bikes, the roadside memorials where a bicycle is painted white and placed at the site where a cyclist was hit and killed by a motorist.<\/p>\n Federal immigration authorities say the use of such terms as kidnapping is inaccurate and unfair, that they lawfully arrest migrants who have no permission to be in the United States and who in some cases have committed criminal and even violent offenses.<\/p>\n Immigration<\/a> and Customs Enforcement officials in Philadelphia said that on Feb. 16, officers conducted a targeted action and arrested Abdulasen Nazarkhudoev. They said he was unlawfully in the U.S.<\/a>, and told them that he was a Russian citizen.<\/p>\n