In the early morning hours of August 2, 2019, Alzayer made a public statement regarding US policy to separate children from their parents at the southern border with an adaptation to the famous “Make Way for Ducklings” statue in the Public Garden.

Here is her statement regarding the piece:

The Mallards are an iconic immigrant family in Boston. In the book, they moved here for a better life, they were looking for a place to stay. And if that were to happen during this climate today, this would be their fate. And since the statue of them is absolutely so beloved, it’s a powerful metaphor about who we get upset about caging and who we don’t.

Holding those mylar blankets was really what made it real for me. They may provide warmth, but they do so in the coldest way possible. The thing that’s comforting about being wrapped in a blanket is the weight of it, along with the warmth. And there is absolutely no weight to those things. And they’re loud. The crinkling sound they make is almost deafening when you’re wrapped up in one. You can’t think over the sound of it. And when I thought of children, ripped away from their parents, and given only this, it’s a lot to take in. It almost feels that these specific materials are used on purpose, to provide warmth yet without comfort.

The ducklings seem small and delicate, but the cages were enormous. And holding those materials in my hands really made me think even more about the wrongness of what we’re allowing to happen in our name, and with our taxpayer dollars at these so-called migrant detention centers. I prefer to call them concentration camps, because that’s what they are.

I went by early Friday morning and saw that my installation had already been removed. And I think it’s interesting that the ducks can wear Easter bonnets, Red Sox hats, and Pats jerseys, but when it comes to what their real fate might be in this country as immigrants, it’s erased pretty quickly rather than opening up a conversation about that. And I think it speaks volumes about how quickly we can free someone who is caged when we think it’s important to do so.