"He Was Only Five," which is oil on canvas and stands at 24 x 24. Lee Massaro Photo.
When the artist Lee Massaro saw a photograph of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who last week was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on his way home from school in the suburbs of Minneapolis, they couldn’t stop thinking about it.
His eyes, wide and soft beneath his hat, looked so scared. His little mouth hung open just a tiny bit. Past his chin, the knitted ties of his hat hung askew in the cold, with paw-patterned pom-poms dangling at the ends. Behind him, the large hand of a masked ICE agent clutching his Spiderman backpack seemed more like a claw.
Massaro knew that Liam wasn’t the first to have his world upended like this: ICE detained almost 4,000 children last year alone. This month in Minneapolis, the federal agency has arrested at least nine children, from just two to 17 years old. But something about this sweet-faced boy was a breaking point.
Massaro, an assistant manager at Hull’s Art Supply who works between Cheshire and New Haven, is one of a growing number of artists using their work to speak out—and disrupt business as usual—as ICE continues to terrorize communities across the country, including in Minneapolis and right here in New Haven. Last week, they took the time to pay homage to Conejo Ramos, with a vibrant canvas of his hat sinking in the snow. The image is inspired by a photograph of the young boy that has since captured the sheer cruelty of a military occupation.
As the piece, titled “He Was Only Five,” makes its way out into the world, they are hopeful that the work can send a clear message that none of this is normal—and cannot become normalized. Currently, the U.S. government is holding Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Ramos, in an ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas. On Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge ruled that the two cannot imminently be deported.
“My heart is breaking,” Massaro said in a phone call Sunday afternoon, as snow swirled outside. “I’m not trying to be political. It’s about humanity. It’s about a child. It’s about a family … Normally, I can compartmentalize how much I feel and move forward, but this is like, next level. It’s a breaking point. It’s like, these people have added to the chaos and the madness.”
In the painting, based on a vision that Massaro had after seeing the original picture, Liam’s hat lays discarded in the snow, two large, floppy ears unmoving at its sides. On its front, where a forehead should be snuggled warmly underneath, a cartoon face looks up, entirely too cheery for the situation. Its pink mouth forms an eerie, too-animated smile. The hat’s twisty ties wind out into the foreground, with furry pom-poms that turn into paws at the ends. A copper color rises beneath the snow, as if even this ground is inherently dirty.
If you are a parent, or an auntie, or an educator, or maybe an older sibling, you can feel the delicate ballet that should be taking place here, the careful fastening of those two ties beneath a little chin as an extra measure of warmth, the parting hand on a cheek or gentle “see you later,” the warm hug waiting at the end of the day, probably with a snack like clementine oranges and Cheerios.
That the little chin is missing; that there are no small eyes to delight in the cartoon face; that the hug may never come, it’s all too much to bear. It’s part of the brilliance of the painting (and the power of the original photo): the dissonance of the scene is deafening. There’s no universe in which this should be happening to a child. How, after all, is a 5-year-old among what the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly called “the worst of the worst”?
Massaro at an artist-led City-Wide Open Studios in October 2024. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
For Massaro, a graduate of Paier College of Art, the painting is part of a call to action that starts well before this year, although the current administration has brought a new level of urgency and overwhelm to what they are feeling. For years, Massaro has been politically active both in and outside their Erector Square studio, from protests to their vibrant paintings of public lands that are at risk. Over a decade ago, “I remember seeing all of this coming,” and just bracing themselves.
Back then, it was Trump’s first term in office—a presidency also built on campaign promises that were anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woman, anti-Black, and anti-poor—and Massaro was in the first year of their studies at Paier College. They showed up at protests. They kept making work, including images of parks and public lands that became the foundation of their “Manifestation” series. When they graduated in 2020, they signed up for another kind of social justice work, and became an arts educator in West Haven.
It was an education in and of itself. At first, Massaro filled in as a substitute teacher at Edith E. Mackrille Elementary School, for what they thought would be a few months. But those months turned into a year, and Massaro transferred to Seth G. Haley Elementary School in 2021, working towards their teaching certification at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) at the same time. By the end of that year, they were teaching over 475 students.
Only later did they think about how many of them might, in this upside-down universe, have shared Liam’s story. Currently, West Haven is home to thousands of immigrants and refugees, including families who are now too terrified to leave the house. When Massaro saw the photograph of Liam, something just clicked. It was as if he was reaching out and asking them to speak up.
“I woke up, and it was almost like it was all I could see,” they remembered. “I had some things I had to do [around the house], but I was like, ‘You have to go paint this.’”
That insistent voice stayed with them as they made the drive from Cheshire to their Erector Square studio, unwrapped a canvas, and started to sketch an image from memory. “I just used what I saw in my mind,” they said (that too is a relatively new technique, as they normally work from photos). When they had drawn it onto the canvas, “it just poured out of me.” The whole canvas was done in five hours.
“The entire time, I felt like I was gasping for air,” they remembered, adding that they also intend to start work on an image honoring Alex Pretti, a VA nurse who was gunned down by ICE on Saturday, after trying to defend a woman that ICE agents had thrown to the ground. “My heart was breaking.”
Going forward, they added, they are hopeful that their artwork can send a message to others, particularly those who believe they are insulated from ICE’s actions, or are going on with their daily lives as if everything is normal. For them, that means slowing down, speaking up, making more eye contact, and taking the time to pause—to pull over, to record and document ICE activity, and to more actively protect community members.
“I hope to see a growing awareness of others and a heightened amount of kindness and a willingness to be there for each other,” they said. “I want people to not have to hide away. Fear is what they [ICE] want. At the end of the day, fear does nothing. You have to be there for your neighbors.”
“That is what’s killing us,” they added, noting how often they are walking into work on Chapel Street, and can’t meet anyone else’s gaze when they try to make eye contact. “We don’t see each other.”
In a phone call Wednesday afternoon, a member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition praised Massaro’s approach, noting that artmaking can be both a coping mechanism and a call to action. In the past weeks, coalition members have worked with families affected by deportation to make and send out cards printed with pressed flowers. In part, it’s a way to thank donors who have made the coalition’s work possible. In part, it’s a way to just keep going when the grief and fear feel incredibly heavy.
“This is a community activity that people can participate in,” she said. “Even thinking about it, it brings tears to my eyes … This lets us continue the fight.”
It has inspired her, along with fellow members, to consider adding routine artmaking, from visual art to poetry to song, to coalition meetings and protests, as a way to channel joy in the fight for social justice and community safety. While allies can help in myriad ways—court accompaniments, legal observation, emergency food aid and direct financial assistance— artmaking is one of them.
Currently, she said, the coalition is thinking about enlisting community members to knit black hats for protest marshals and legal observers, onto which a partner at MakeHaven could embroider the coalition’s initials or logo.
“I feel like there are these types of ways where we can support our community” while also creating joy, she said. “It’s like the hands of people protecting the people that are using them … like a hug around the head.”
To follow Lee Massaro’s art, click here. To donate to the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, click here. To report a suspected ICE sighting, call 854-NOMIGRA | (854) 666-4472 or 475-323-9413 (ULA’s rapid response line). Report using the acronym SALUTE: try to get the size of the group, the activity or action that you saw, the location of the officers, what uniform or clothes they were wearing, the time and the equipment.