An artist put cages and foil blankets around Boston’s iconic “Make Way for Ducklings” statue to protest the Trump administration’s migrant detention policies on the southern border.

In an interview with Boston's WGBH, artist Karyn Alzayer said she put chicken wire cages around pairs of the duck statues, including a separate one for the mother duck at the front of the line, thus separating her from her offspring.

Each of the ducks was wrapped with a metallic blanket, evoking the shiny emergency blankets migrants are given in detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Alzayer, founder of the Boston-area nonprofit Integral Arts Everett, said she added the cages and blankets to the “Mallards,” as they are known in Boston, to draw attention to the conditions migrants face in the U.S.

The Mallards are featured in Robert McCloskey’s children’s book “Make Way for Ducklings,” which features a family of ducks making its way home in Boston’s Public Garden.

“The Mallards are Boston's quintessential immigrant family,” Alzayer told WGBH. “In the book they moved here for a better life.”

“In the book, the ducklings were looking for a place to stay. If that were to happen during today’s climate this would be their fate,” she continued. “The statue is so beloved in the city. It's a metaphor about who we get upset about caging and who we don't.”

Alzayer said the material of the blankets, which were designed to bring “warmth but not comfort,” were central to her efforts.

“It was hard for me to feel those materials and my hands every day knowing that this is what some child's real experience is here in our country at our hands,” she said.

A park employee told WGBH that the cages and blankets were removed Friday morning by a local homeless man who often cleans statues. A spokesperson for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department told the news outlet that they did not approve the addition to the statue.

The Trump administration has come under fire for months for conditions in migrant detention centers at the border.