ICE crosses: Grays Harbor residents aren’t looking away
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 21, 2026
The ICE memorial on U.S. Highway 12 across from the Elma rest area enlarged this month. Twenty more white crosses — another row and the lengthening of the original four rows — representing 20 more individuals killed by ICE. And they are the people we know about.
“Every single one of these people woke up with dreams,” said one of the volunteers helping to manage the installation, gesturing to the crosses.
Erecting the new crosses is an assembly line of sorts. Someone works ahead drilling the new holes. A post is placed in the hole and shifted forward and back until two people confirm it is straight. The post is driven into the ground, dirt tapped in and the cross beams are screwed into place. It’s not quick work; the ground is uneven and dried out.
As the team works, cars honk in what everyone assumes is praise for what they are doing.
“Creating this installation, the process comes from the big increase in deaths that are happening in ICE custody or at the hands of ICE,” said Ann (last named omitted for privacy reasons), a member of Save Our Democracy. “And that seeing people, our neighbors, our immigrant neighbors here and around the country taken off the streets, from their workplaces, in front of schools and childcare centers out of their cars, dragged out of their cars, all that, witnessing that shook us deeply and left us grieving and angry and clear that to stay in integrity with our ethics, our moral foundation, we needed to do something, to say something.”
The group decided upon a visual statement of crosses, and the first 52 were erected in April.
Although the screws holding the cross beam in place aren’t visible from a distance, they are painted over with a few passes of white paint, and the upper portion is touched up to cover the scruff marks from the post driver.
“We felt like putting up the crosses was an act of accountability for ourselves because looking away from that just felt not acceptable,” Ann said. “It’s unethical to look away and we thought it would also be an invitation to people who are driving by the crosses to take a moment just of awareness, of reflection, maybe even self-reckoning.”
A volunteer weed whacked the grass that had grown up around the base of the sign bearing the words, “In Memory Of Those Killed By ICE.” Solar-powered spotlights enable the sign to be read by nighttime drivers.
“Another really great piece of putting those ICE crosses up is saying to every person who drives by who is distressed by what’s happening, ‘You’re not alone in being distressed,’” Ann said. “And action can be taken and we can all speak out.”
On the night of July 19, the sign was vandalized, with the black spray-painted text now thanking ICE.
A Vietnam combat veteran who served with the Marine Corps called a member of the team, alerting them to the vandalism.
“He was pissed. He fought for our freedom of speech. And they violated it around an issue he cares about,” shared the team member via text.
The sign has been temporarily taken down to be repainted and will be reinstalled later this week.
In the subsequent weeks Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo were among the people killed in July. Which means more crosses will be erected.
