Comic community responds to ICE detention with art for Liam
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For a group of comic artists, the Spider-Man backpack of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was detained by federal immigration agents, was the spark for a call to action.
“He was wearing a Spider-Man backpack while this ICE agent had a hand on his backpack, and that just stabbed me in the heart,” says comic artist Greg Pak.
Pak, who’s based in New York, has been working in superhero comics for more than two decades.
“I don't know Liam, I don't know what he was thinking, but if he's wearing that Spider-Man backpack, I feel like we told him stories about heroes and about heroes protecting people,” Pak says. ”In that moment, those stories were a lie, and that makes me sick to my stomach, because he was not protected.”
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On Feb. 1, Pak and a New York-based community organization called Comix Action started the online #Comics4Liam campaign, calling on comics creators from around the world to “create artwork with Liam in mind,” as well as other children that ICE has impacted.
ICE detained Liam and his father Adrian Conejo Arias of Columbia Heights on Jan. 20 and sent them to a Texas detention center; a judge has since ordered their release. Four other children from the Columbia Heights school district, however, are still believed to be in ICE custody at the same detention center in Texas, the district says
The artworks created so far for #Comics4Liam include images of Spider-Man wearing the blue bunny hat Liam wore while detained.
One comic by New York artist Wilfredo Torres states: “Someday you’ll know that there were so many people thinking and worrying about you even though you don’t know us.”
Other artworks include cartoons of Liam in the bunny hat himself — riding a dragon, or surrounded by a group of bunnies in the snow
South Minneapolis comics artist Trung Le Nguyen drew Liam in his hat with a Pikachu perched on top.
“We're really trying to connect with people kind of narratively, on a personal level, because these stories are personal to us,” Nguyen says.
Nguyen is Vietnamese American, and came to Minnesota as a child from a refugee camp in the Philippines.
“It's very, very personally resonant, simply because I grew up having a lot of American Ideals sort of presented to me in very warm and glossy ways,” Trung says. “Now seeing that this is not the experience that is shared with new immigrants, that this violence that's being enacted on immigrant communities is something that is just incredibly shocking to me, but it's also something that feels a piece with the way that the culture has shifted.”
With fellow Minnesota-based comic artists K. Woodman-Maynard and Jason Walz, Trung started another online comics campaign, “ICE OUT! Cartoonists Against Ice,” earlier this year. Trung’s comic shows how he now carries his passport with him, even though he became a U.S. citizen when he was seven.
Trung says comics art offers a uniquely accessible approach for disseminating information and expressing uncomfortable emotions or traumatic experiences.
“Storytelling through the arts kind of gives us this unique opportunity to be very upfront about the emotional resonance and the personal ways that we're all connected to each other,” he says.
For Pak, he hopes Liam and his family see the artworks someday. He also hopes it sparks more action, to “help Liam, and folks like Liam.”
