The installations are part of an activist campaign called #NoKidsInCages, which calls on lawmakers to end family separation by passing the Keep Families Together Act. Advertising agency
Badger & Winters started #NoKidsinCages to support Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, known as
Raices, organizers said in a press release.
Family separation stems from the
Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy toward migrants who cross into the US from Mexico illegally. As part of this policy, children and their parents would be held in separate detention facilities.
While the Trump administration officially ended the family separation policy in summer 2018, advocates have contended that
migrant children are still being separated from their parents.
"The installations – models of 'children' in cages – are intended to be an emotional, provocative, multisensory experience that represents the conditions that children are being subjected to at the border due to the Department of Justice's Zero Tolerance Immigration Enforcement Policy," organizers said in a statement.
The cages were installed at Manhattan locations such as the American Museum of Natural History, Google's Chelsea Market building and several media companies' headquarters.
