The moment I stepped out of my Uber in this West Side Chicago neighborhood, the noise echoed everywhere.
Hawks. curse. Squeaking tires. The engine revs high. Whistle. .
Immigration authorities were conducting another investigation. And people weren’t feeling it.
Across 26th Street, the heart of this historic Latino community, people – old and young, Latino, black and white – shouted warnings from cars and businesses like a game of telephone. One of them was Eric Vandeford, who looked around in all directions for any signs. emigration.
“We all surrounded them earlier to try to catch someone, but they just left,” said the 32-year-old. He was looking down at 26th place. “I have to go,” he said, and trotted off.
I arrived at 9:30 a.m. to have breakfast before interviewing Baltazar Enriquez. He is also chairman of the Little Village Community Council. The group is a long-running nonprofit organization that has organized food drives to confront Trump’s deportation machine, furthering its mission to combat environmental racism.
Instead, I found myself busy trying to keep up with immigration officials.
In the past two months, emigration It swept through Chicago, but also brought down the hammer on Little Village, known to its residents as La Villita and considered the heart of Mexico. Imagine the density of Pico Union, the small-town feel of Boyle Heights, and the fierce pride of South LA. Add to the mix the murals and nationally known Mexican restaurants like Carnitas Uruapan and Taqueria El Milagro.
It’s a charming barrio, but like many other parts of the Windy City, it’s under siege.
Immigration agents conducted the operation in a local school parking lot before rounding up illegal immigrants and nationals alike. As he passed by in late October, he threw tear gas canisters at a group of protesters who were filming him, an act so condemned that on the morning I was in Little Village, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting such violence.
Now, there are rumors that Bovino is leading a caravan on patrol.
He is the man the Trump administration ordered a mass deportation of in Southern California this summer. In Los Angeles, Bovino mostly committed robberies on camera, like when he was supervising National Guard troops parked on Wilshire Boulevard. Bovino said transnational gangs needed to be stopped, but no one was arrested.
In Chicago, Bovino pushed his brutality and spectacle to number 11. Residents responded with kindness unlike anything seen in Southern California. Indeed, Angelenos are organizing group chats and soliciting cooperation from politicians, just like in Chicago.
But we don’t have a whistle.
These have become the Windy City’s autumn soundtrack, with organizers hosting a “Whistlemania” event to distribute them to thousands of people. Chicago has a radical heritage, with anarchists, socialists, and immigrants fighting government-backed thugs when Los Angeles was still a relative cow town.
The suburban apathy that has kept far too many Southern Californians on the sidelines as immigration agents flood into the city was nowhere to be felt in Little Village. People fled their businesses and homes. Some people were looking out from the rooftop. The intensity of their backlash was more focused, raw, and far-reaching than most I’ve seen back home.
Activists weren’t the only ones waiting. Each block is ready.
Horns and whistles blared to the west. I ran towards them and met Rogelio Lopez Jr. He would go into grocery stores and discount marts to let people know. ice — ICE — was nearby.
The 53-year-old Little Village resident was enjoying lunch with his father at Carniceria Aguascalientes on the day Bovino rioted nearby. He and other customers jumped out to confront the Border Patrol tycoon.
“I’m sure he was thinking, ‘This guy is standing in front of my troops playing his stupid little whistle in my territory.’ No, I’m in. our region. ”
A minivan pulled up near us and rolled down its windows. “We lost Central and the 26th!” Mariana Ochoa, 32, shouted from the backseat, holding her son on her lap. This time, an 18-year-old female college student wearing a mask also joined the group. Her name is Ella and she and her parents are American citizens. She rattled off all the places her WhatsApp group spotted ICE that morning. Lopez sent a message to his group.
Ella answered the phone from her mother.
“I’m going home soon, so or,” the college student said in Spanish. “I love you. Please stay at home.”
Angry residents gathered on street corners. Many wore pink, black, orange, or green flutes around their necks. López handed it to Juan Ballena, who immediately used it. A high-pitched, reedy explosion was quickly answered by others.
He waved his hand up and down 26th Street. “Look at the building,” the 61-year-old said. “Closed, closed, closed, here. migrate We are ruining a beautiful city. ”
Nearby, 64-year-old Flavio Rubiano stood outside his wife’s bistro, holding a whistle in one hand and a laminated authorization card in the other. Business slumps and trust erodes.
“I always lock my door,” the dual Mexican-American citizen said in Spanish. “People who are not from here come and say, ‘Please let us in,’ and I tell them, ‘No, only if we have a warrant.’ They get angry, and I say, ‘I don’t care, we need to protect the people we know.'”
Three blocks east, the honks, screams, and whistles that I had heard an hour earlier were echoing again. ICE had just passed by.
Enriquez, a stocky man, stood in the middle of the street, trying to shoo away a car whose driver tried to block the masked immigration agents. People around him were scurrying in all directions, alerting others to what had happened on their cell phones. “I have their…license plates on my phone!” the woman yelled to no one in particular.
Most people wore whistles around their necks.
Wearing Crocs, a down jacket and sweats, Enriquez looked like a defender about to start a training session.
We soon left again.
Esparza and his driver, Lysette Barrera, sped down Little Village’s narrow tree-lined streets, many of which had signs inside city flags that read “Hands Off Chicago.” They blew whistles, honked car horns, and “¡¡you “La Migra!”
The immigration officer always seemed to be several minutes ahead. They were asking people about their legal status, according to reports via text message. Some were detained.
We ended up parking under the Little Village Arch. The Little Village Arch is a colonial-style gate that straddles the section of 26th Street where my Uber dropped me off earlier. The crowd was waiting to hear Enriquez’s game plan: “No ramming, no throwing, nothing. Just chase and shoot.”
A Chicago police officer walked by. “they are gone now “(They’re gone),” he told Enriquez, very matter-of-factly. “The whistle worked.”
Steven Villalobos pulled up in a truck on stilts with a giant Mexican flag flying from the cab. It was his first protest.
“We’ve been watching this for months and enough is enough. We had to get involved,” the Little Village resident said. Near him, Amor Cárdenas nodded.
“It’s a shame that my mom… can’t even go to Los Angeles,” the 20-year-old said. She was still wearing her pajamas. “You won’t understand this fear until it’s right in front of you. Once that happens, there’s no going back.”
Barrera and I jumped into the back seat of another car as Enriquez took the wheel. She opened the Sabriton bag and handed it to two other passengers. The four had just returned from Washington, D.C., on an overnight bus and participated in an anti-Trump demonstration on the National Mall.
Enriquez drove more slowly. He and a volunteer named Leal logged on to Instagram and livestreamed from their cellphones to about a thousand viewers.
“Those who have papers, please come out and patrol,” he said in a low voice in Spanish. “For everyone else, please stay indoors.”
“Tell Balthazar I’m going to buy it for him.” Caguama,Reel said someone commented. He’s a tall beer boy.
Enriquez smiled for the first time all morning. “Please make it two.”
Enriquez, 46, was born in Michoacán state, came to Chicago undocumented as a child and became an American citizen thanks to a 1986 amnesty. He established himself as an activist in the Assn. Prior to becoming Vice President of the Little Village Community Council in 2008, he was a member of the Community Organization for Reform, better known as ACORN.
Espinoza said the idea to use whistles in Chicago to warn people about ICE started in Little Village, but indirectly came from Los Angeles. During a Zoom call in June, Enriquez heard activists protesting outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles say their cellphones suddenly went out and they were unable to communicate with each other.
“So I thought, if something were to happen here, we needed low-tech to defeat it,” Enriquez said as he walked past the city-owned property where ICE had been operating several weeks ago. Signs are currently in place to prohibit entry by immigration officials. “At first people thought the whistle was a joke. But then we used it once and emigration It took off and spread like wildfire. ”
We were now in nearby Brighton Park. He was following up on information that Bovino was approaching the residents himself.
“They just tear gassed someone!” someone yelled into the phone. “They’re taking people now.”
The phone cut off in the middle.
Enriquez tried to speed back to Little Village, but ran into construction traffic. Barrera jumped out of the car and grabbed two traffic cones. “It’s to capture the pepper balls when the ICE fires them,” she explained.
Call again. “They captured my son,” the woman said quietly in Spanish.
Enriquez responded, “Go to the (Little Village Community Council) office and we’ll help you.”
“I can’t go out. I don’t have any documents.”
As we passed by the elementary school off Western Avenue, Mr. Barrera shouted in Spanish. emigration He’s running around! ”The teachers immediately blew their whistles and rushed the students into the school.
ICE had left Little Village for now. Enriquez logged back onto Instagram Live.
“Good job, guys. Stay with ICE.” buttocks”
We turned right on the 26th toward a small office in the Little Village Community Center. “I’m going to take a break,” Enriquez told the audience. We have to prepare pizza for everyone. ”
A bilingual sign posted in the storefront window read “ICE OUT!” And “free whistle”.
“They said they would only target bad people, but that didn’t happen,” said Nayeri Hiron, a 24-year-old student. She was wearing a jacket with the word “Southwest” written on it, the name of a nearby neighborhood. “Every day is different. That’s why we need to stand up.”
Enriquez told everyone to gather around.
It’s time to learn how to unlock pepper balls.
