Blowing the whistle in Chicago and Charlotte
Neighbors join forces to warn of -- and prevent -- abductions by federal agents
As brutal, racist immigration enforcement continues in Chicago and starts up in Charlotte, the humble whistle has emerged as the new icon of the resistance.
Neighbors are using whistles to alert their communities that federal immigration agents are in the area, and to try to drive those agents away.
Why a whistle?
As the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights explains, they’re
A simple tool for fast alerts.
Loud. Recognizable. Impossible to ignore.
Whistles have become endemic in Chicago, in part due to events where volunteers assemble “whistle kits”. One recent evening, residents put together 17,000 kits that include a whistle, a Know Your Rights printout, and a zine with instructions on how and when to use the whistle.
“It’s effective because people start understanding that if they hear the whistle, they should run or hide,” Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Our idea of the whistle grew like wildfire.”
The tactic was quickly embraced in Charlotte, after Border Patrol agents showed up in force on Saturday.
Here’s an inspiring video shot on Sunday, showing a group of whistle-blowing Charlotte teenagers driving away masked Border Patrol agents who were searching the woods for a man.
Chicago Resists
The Associated Press reports:
As an unprecedented immigration crackdown enters a third month, a growing number of Chicago residents are fighting back against what they deem a racist and aggressive overreach of the federal government. The Democratic stronghold’s response has tapped established activists and everyday residents from wealthy suburbs to working class neighborhoods. …
“The strategy here is to make us afraid. The response from Chicago is a bunch of obscenities and ‘no,’” said Anna Zolkowski Sobor, whose North Side neighborhood saw agents throw tear gas and tackle an elderly man. “We are all Chicagoans who deserve to be here. Leave us alone.”
More than 100 faith leaders attended a protest outside the notorious ICE facility in Broadview., Ill., on Friday. Cook County Police arrested 21 people for obstruction. Religion News reported that “at least seven of those arrested were faith leaders from Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Unitarian Universalist and Jewish traditions.”
One of the arrested faith leaders, the Rev. Michael Woolf, had explained his motivation a few days earlier:
For me at least, these protests are also an expression of my most deeply held religious beliefs. Throughout Scripture, we are instructed to care for the immigrants in our midst. Leviticus 19:33-34 even says, “When a foreigner resides among you, do not mistreat them. The foreigner living among you must be treated as one of your own people and you must love them as you love yourself, because you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” It’s hard to get clearer than that.
In addition, Matthew 25 clearly says that God is identified with the most vulnerable in society. Whatever we do to or withhold from them, we do to or withhold from Jesus. I take that very seriously because it is one of the clearest avenues we have to God in this moment. For people wanting to experience God, we are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview facility than we ever were in church. I say that as someone who leads a church for a living. God does not live in our houses of worship, but instead chooses to dwell with those who are bearing the brunt of cruelty in this moment.
A group of highly-respected Chicago broadcast veterans published an open letter sounding the alarm about the conduct of federal immigration agents:
For years, you watched and listened to our coverage of the Chicago area. As journalists, we did our best to bring you accurate, objective information about the people, events and issues that mattered. We hope we gained your trust.
So please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong….
None of us can do everything, but we all can do something. We urge you to support groups fighting for due process or who help immigrants during this siege. News organizations also need our financial support to continue their vital reporting.
The Chicago Tribune featured two Chicago brothers – both teenagers -- who are on the front lines:
At 16 and 17 years old, Sam and Ben for the past two months have made it their mission to follow, investigate and capture federal immigration activity across the Chicago area. It’s an undertaking the brothers say happened naturally after growing up in a household where social justice and civic duty were as much a part of their homeschool curriculum as math and science.
Onward to Charlotte
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who led operations in Los Angeles and Chicago, brought his gang of masked thugs to Charlotte on Saturday. The Department of Homeland Security said that over 200 people were arrested between Saturday and Monday.
The New York Times reports:
As the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration spreads, North Carolina’s largest city has emerged as an unexpected target far from any border, shaking a region that has quietly become one of the largest hubs in the country for international migration.
North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Josh Stein, issued a statement on Sunday:
We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling, and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks, going after landscapers simply decorating a Christmas tree in someone’s front yard, and entering churches and stores to grab people.
This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.
Protests began on Saturday at a local park. The Charlotte Observer reported that attendees were “delivering a clear message to federal agents: ‘Get out.’”
There were more protests outside a Homeland Security office on Sunday evening. “No fear, no hate, we want ICE out of our state,” protesters chanted.
Hundreds of students across Charlotte held school walkouts in protest of the Border Patrol on Tuesday morning, WBTV reported.
MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroff reported from a well-attended training in Charlotte for people who want to learn how to protect their neighbors from Trump’s mass deportation effort.
And here’s a video showing Charlotte residents confronting Border Patrol agents in a supermarket parking lot.
Elsewhere in North Carolina
Federal agents on Tuesday also reportedly detained at least 12 residents in North Carolina’s Research Triangle region, including inside Raleigh, Durham and Cary.
Hundreds of protesters filled a Raleigh square and then marched through downtown Tuesday night demanding an end to the raids, according to the News and Observer.
The paper also reported:
Over 600 volunteers signed up overnight to help in Raleigh, according to Siembra NC, which uses photos, videos and eyewitness accounts to verify people being detained. By early morning, the group had dispatched trained volunteers across the city to help children and residents get to school and work safely, and to respond to calls to its hotline, the group said in a news release. “After four days of federal agents creating chaos in North Carolina cities and towns, it’s clear that the people who are showing up to keep our communities safe are the people who live and make our lives here, not these lawless agents” said Kelly Morales, co-director at Siembra NC.
The Catholic Church Is Outraged
America’s Catholic bishops last week denounced the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants, saying it violates “God-given human dignity.”
Though not calling Trump out by name, the special pastoral message issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop called for “meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures.” (See the TikTok version.)
The bishops wrote:
We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immgrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.
They concluded:
We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.
On Tuesday, the pope expressed support for the bishops’ message and called for people in the U.S. “to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.”
Boycott Target, Home Depot, and Amazon
A coalition that includes Indivisible and Black Voters Matter has launched a campaign called We Ain’t Buying It, “to demonstrate to corporations that there are consequences for not standing up loudly for freedom and core democratic principles of fairness, justice, and liberty by hitting them where it hurts.”
The campaign calls for a full Thanksgiving blackout -- from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday – of three major retailers that it says have capitulated to the Trump administration:
Target caved to Trump and rolled back their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Home Depot has done nothing to protect immigrants in their stores as ICE continues to conduct violent raids on their property.
Amazon has funded the Trump administration through donations and discounted government contracts (including for ICE), all in exchange for massive corporate tax breaks.
“Instead of fighting back and supporting the very people who put money in their pockets, corporations and retailers have bowed at Trump’s feet. But we ain’t buying it,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.
This Week in the Courts
A federal judge in Chicago last week announced his plan to grant bond on Friday to hundreds of immigrants arrested in ICE’s recent blitz, because federal agents lacked warrants or probable cause as required by a consent decree. In an order on Tuesday denying the government a stay, Judge Jeffrey Cummings wrote that 442 people stand to benefit, as 57 have been deemed a safety risk, 75 have already been deported and 33 have otherwise been released.
A federal judge threw out a Trump administration lawsuit that had attempted to force the state of New York to aid federal officials making immigration arrests in the state’s courthouses. “The Tenth Amendment permits a state to decline to assist with federal immigration efforts,” Judge Mae D’Agostino wrote.
A Tennessee judge has granted a temporary injunction that would block the state’s governor from continuing to deploy members of the Tennessee National Guard in Memphis, where they have been on patrol since last month. The plaintiffs, including the city’s mayor, argued that Tennessee constitution allows the guard to be deployed only in “circumstances amounting to a rebellion or invasion,” and “even then, the legislature must declare, by law, that the public safety requires it.”
The ACLU, representing seven people detained by ICE, has filed a class action suit against the Trump administration over inhumane conditions at California’s largest immigration detention center, the privately owned California City Detention Facility located in Kern County.
End Notes
A group called the “Removal Coalition” is organizing a “Remove the Regime” protest in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The event’s headliner will be the Boston-based band, the Dropkick Murphys. “We will no longer tolerate inaction or delay from elected officials as Donald Trump commits actual treason,” the group says. “We are calling out their complicity in the sabotage of American democracy unless and until they honor their oath. We are demanding impeachment and removal, and we are demanding it NOW.”
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander refused a plea bargain and is instead seeking a federal trial for his act of civil disobedience against immigration agents inside a New York federal building in September. Lander was handcuffed and arrested while trying to guide a defendant out of an immigration court. “I believe the crime is not what we were doing. The crime on that day was on the other side of the 10th floor door, where ICE agents are keeping our neighbors in cruel detention conditions,” Lander said in a statement.