Baltazar Enriquez began wearing his whistle in June, when the threat of the Trump administration’s immigration raids was more focused and the fear perhaps less widespread in Chicago. The whistle — green plastic, attached to an orange lanyard — was at first a small gesture of preparedness. It has since become a symbol of resistance.

In the beginning, the sight of it around Enriquez’s neck prompted questions and confusion in Little Village, one of Chicago’s proudest Latino neighborhoods. He remembers people asking him, perplexed: “What is a whistle gonna do?”

“And we said, ‘Well, the whistle is in case immigration is around, and you start blowing. The whistle is for people who are undocumented to go away, to lock their doors, lock their gates and not open the door.’

“And it grew like w

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