Caged 'Children' Appear Throughout Des Moines Amid Iowa Caucus to Remind Voters of 'The Terrors Enacted in Your Name' Favorite 

Caucus-goers in Des Moines will arrive to a disturbing sight on Monday, with dozens of chain-link cages appearing to hold migrant children cropping up across the city overnight.

On Monday, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) said it had installed the cages with "fake children inside" to remind caucus-goers of the impact President Donald Trump's "anti-immigrant crackdown" had on migrants and asylum seekers as they meet to vote on their preferred candidates for each party.

Erika Andiola, the chief advocacy officer for RAICES told Newsweek she knew that seeing children locked in cages, covered only by a Mylar blanket, would be a "disturbing" experience for caucus-goers, but it was important that they "don't look away."

"Yes, it's uncomfortable," she said. "But, at the end of the day, this is the reality of what the country is doing to a lot of children and a lot of people of all ages at the border and in immigration detention centers across the country."

In addition to showing children in cages with the message: "Don't look away" hanging from the chain-link fencing, audio recordings of a child affected by the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" family separation policy are also being played as part of the demonstration.

While the widely condemned policy, which saw more than 2,500 children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, was eventually rescinded by President Donald Trump, Andiola said families continue to be separated by the Trump administration's policies. One example of this is the growing occurrence of families forced to wait in Mexico while their immigration cases are processed in the U.S. choosing to send their children across the border alone so they will be allowed into America as unaccompanied children.

"It's important for caucus-goers and voters to not forget that this is one of the biggest crises in America," Andiola said. "That Trump's biggest priority has been to attack the immigrant community and to use every and any tactic that he has to dehumanize and treat us in a way that will allow his...agenda to move forward."

Des Moines, she said, "is a place that everybody's looking at today." RAICES believed it was important to ensure that caucus-goers and the rest of the country does "not forget that this is still happening. Children are still in cages. People are still being separated from their families."

"We're not telling people who to vote for," she added. "We are telling people and voters that this is still an issue."

Andiola said one man walking by one of the cage installations with his family had been left feeling "disturbed by the sound and image."

He and others, she said, should "take this image and this audio and everything that they saw and that they experienced, take that into the polls, take that into the caucuses as they decide who to vote for."

"Don't look away from the terrors enacted in your name," she said in a separate statement provided by RAICES. "Don't look away from the kids in cages, the asylum-seekers turned back at our border, the deportation raids destroying communities across the country. This anti-immigrant crackdown has to end."