Maya Edelman

Along the tide-swept shores and marshlands of a once-major city, people have gone but the artifacts of their era linger: rusted vehicles, heaped tires, crushed cement and glass. Old structures fall. Mechanical observation systems glitch. Wildlife roam these derelict lands anew. In the absence of human perception linear progressions falter and time moves in loops and skips, unpredictable. And over geologic time, even our most impervious creations will degrade and cease to exist.

Despite New York’s status as a sanctuary city, ICE facilities ring and infiltrate the boroughs while its agents continue to make hundreds of arrests every month. We know this, especially when high-profile abuses are reported, but ICE presence here typically goes unseen and unremarked on. Sanctuary highlights this troubling disjunction, and the millions of people threatened by it, through a pointed act of looking at the architectural apparatuses of detention and deportation. As long as ICE persists, there is no true sanctuary.