I mean, if you wanted them to not be noticed you could have chosen Portland, Oregon. (Even moreso if we brought NBC's Grimm in.) I kid, of course, since it's much easier to write places that you know. (I saw a thread in /r/AO3 today about some commenter telling the author about all of the inaccuracies he had about his setting in Poland, and of course the author added "I've lived in Poland 35 years." Thankfully, all of our shows are a little older, so the fandom will be more mature than that.)
The idea of your graywings being kidnapped by the government for experiments is essentially out of tone for the setting, because the overall idea is to be set in a real-world deconstruction. And the real world... how do I put this... the real world is far stupider than fiction. It's somewhat annoying, because it forces plots to be somewhat dumber than the best stories.
If I saw a haibane on the street, I would honestly assume they were just in coming off a film set. I live close enough to L.A., so I'm probably biased that way, but it's an Occam's razor explanation. The haloes would be harder to explain. Do you know that one bit in Negima where they hand out magic wands to normies and just tell them "It's CGI" (outdoors!) and it just works? "It's a costume." I've heard that New York is a place where people try hard to ignore all of the weird people on the streets, so most people simply wouldn't notice?
On the government itself kidnapping angels to experiment on them? Having lived through most of the Trump era, I feel like the baddies in government are just too stupid to do something like this. I think it's more likely they try to deport them back to Glie (no, really). Or another tack -- like my Vice President recently said about UFOs: they're probably demons. You said it yourself that people project onto haibane what they want to see. I think a bunch of people in the U.S. government would see them as angels, and then go on to use them to as a clear justification for $literally_any_policy. Now, don't get me wrong, our setting's Academy City would absolutely kidnap haibane and run experiments on them, but Academy City comes from fiction.
If it is a problem that you eventually want to get rid of, Yukito/Yue from Cardcaptor Sakura can probably show them how to hide their wings (and halo) like he does. Even if their true form is really cool.
The idea of your graywings being kidnapped by the government for experiments is essentially out of tone for the setting, because the overall idea is to be set in a real-world deconstruction. And the real world... how do I put this... the real world is far stupider than fiction. It's somewhat annoying, because it forces plots to be somewhat dumber than the best stories.
If I saw a haibane on the street, I would honestly assume they were just in coming off a film set. I live close enough to L.A., so I'm probably biased that way, but it's an Occam's razor explanation. The haloes would be harder to explain. Do you know that one bit in Negima where they hand out magic wands to normies and just tell them "It's CGI" (outdoors!) and it just works? "It's a costume." I've heard that New York is a place where people try hard to ignore all of the weird people on the streets, so most people simply wouldn't notice?
On the government itself kidnapping angels to experiment on them? Having lived through most of the Trump era, I feel like the baddies in government are just too stupid to do something like this. I think it's more likely they try to deport them back to Glie (no, really). Or another tack -- like my Vice President recently said about UFOs: they're probably demons. You said it yourself that people project onto haibane what they want to see. I think a bunch of people in the U.S. government would see them as angels, and then go on to use them to as a clear justification for $literally_any_policy. Now, don't get me wrong, our setting's Academy City would absolutely kidnap haibane and run experiments on them, but Academy City comes from fiction.
If it is a problem that you eventually want to get rid of, Yukito/Yue from Cardcaptor Sakura can probably show them how to hide their wings (and halo) like he does. Even if their true form is really cool.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto