How Artists Responded to 2025’s Surging ICE Raids

We often look back on past moral crises and imagine ourselves acting differently: resisting sooner, refusing silence, choosing courage over complicity. It’s a reassuring fiction, but a fiction all the same. Historical records have shown how readily authority can override personal morality, even when the consequences for others are dire. And yet, at a moment when the state is wielding its power with escalating force, punishing all forms of dissent, many artists are refusing that passivity that hindsight warns us against, and taking a stand against the inhumanity of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The administration’s policies have generated widespread fear and uncertainty within vulnerable communities, pushing daily arrests from roughly 300 in 2024 to more than 1,000 in 2025. As of November, detentions surpassed 65,000, with a majority of those detained having no criminal record. Accounts of families split apart, workers seized mid-shift, and long-time residents deported without due process flood our news and social media feeds.

Efforts to end birthright citizenship, coupled with the deployment of National Guard to cities around the country, have raised urgent questions about the health and longevity of our democracy. From New York to Los Angeles, contemporary artists are responding in real time to this still-unfolding crisis. Alongside organizing, mutual aid, and financial support, they’re making art. This critical contribution expands the social imaginary and cultivates a feeling of political responsibility.

The ten examples that follow—spanning ephemeral sculptures, ritual-performance, acrylic popsicles, neon protest signs, and neo-noir thrillers—remind us that the world is something we make, and so can be made differently, not retrospectively, but now.