How plastic whistles are becoming an anti-ICE resistance tool in Chicago
By Heather Schlitz
CHICAGO (Reuters) – As shrill whistling echoed through a parking lot on Chicago’s North Side on Tuesday, two people opened their car doors, rushed inside and collapsed into their seats. Outside, a convoy of federal immigration enforcement vehicles that had arrived on site just minutes before sped off.
“We saw a group of guys blowing whistles and chasing them,” said Luke, a landscape architect who works nearby and declined to share his full name.
The Trump administration launched a deportation operation in the Chicago area in early September targeting what it said were hardened criminals among immigrants without legal status in the United States; However, many non-criminals were also seized during the raids.
Since then, a sharp whistle has become a signaling device throughout Chicago to indicate that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or U.S. Customs and Border Protection, officers are present. He warns undocumented people to flee and invites U.S. citizens to come to the scene to record arrests, provide legal information to detainees, and prevent agents from lingering.
Aggressive immigration enforcement efforts with no end date have sparked widespread protests and resentment among residents. Hundreds of federal agents swarmed through the third-largest U.S. city and its suburbs, often carrying assault rifles and wearing military fatigues. Agents fired tear gas into crowds, rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to raid an apartment building, dragged immigrants from cars, held people at gunpoint and shot two people, one fatally.
Against this heavily militarized force, whistles became a modest but effective tool to fight back.
“It grew like wildfire,” said Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, a community group in one of Chicago’s largest Latino areas. “If we have to patrol our neighborhood for the next three years, we are willing to do so to keep our community safe.”
The group began distributing whistles to neighborhood residents during the summer months. Incessant publicity since has transformed the whistles into a defining symbol of Chicago’s resistance to ICE.
Volunteers from whistle parties and local activist groups handed out whistles at local festivals and parades and dropped them off at Little Free Libraries. Some residents received warnings from community groups advertising themselves on social media; others bought them only from dollar stores and Amazon.
“Our officers are highly trained,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “and they are not afraid of loud noises and whistles.”
Its ease of use and low cost have contributed to its increased popularity on the streets and on social media. But a whistle has limited effectiveness against armed, fast-moving teams of immigration officers.
On a quiet residential street in another North Side neighborhood, residents ran out of their apartments to confront ICE officers who were detaining a group of landscapers. Their whistles and shouts succeeded in attracting the crowd and getting the names of the detainees forwarded to immigrant rights groups, but the officers still took the two men and walked away.
“I’m sure I’ll cry again later,” said Joanne Willer, an Albany Park resident who used her whistle to sound the alarm about the detention. “This is really sad.”
Later, other residents of Albany Park, a Chicago neighborhood known for its diversity that was tear gassed by federal immigration officers earlier this month, carried different types of noisemakers as they patrolled the streets.
Jordan, who refused to share his last name for fear of retribution, carried his son’s toy train whistle.
“I am Jewish and I feel personally connected to what is happening here because of our history as a Jewish people,” Jordan said. “I feel like if we’re not here supporting our neighbors, no one else is going to do it.”
(Reporting by Heather Schlitz in Chicago; Editing by Emily Schmall and Matthew Lewis)
