In recent weeks, we've seen a disturbing trend emerging across the country: radical left-wing activists distributing whistles and establishing signal systems explicitly designed to mobilize crowds and interfere with federal immigration enforcement operations. This isn't subtle. It's a coordinated effort to obstruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as they carry out lawful deportations—and it amounts to incitement to criminal activity.
My Democratic colleague in the Minnesota House, Representative Aisha Gomez, recently appeared at a press conference responding directly to ICE operations in Minneapolis. She urged residents to carry whistles and use them as a call to action:
"A lot of people in the neighborhoods have these. If you hear a whistle in your community, go out and check out what's happening. If you don't have a whistle, maybe you could get one. It's a way to communicate to people that there is an issue of concern happening in the streets. Don't be afraid to honk your horns if you see something happening."
Translation: Carry this whistle and blow it to signal to other radicals that it's time to take to the streets, surround federal law enforcement, and interfere with their operations.
This isn't unique to Minnesota. In Chicago, activists are distributing thousands of whistles with detailed instructions: one long blast for a "high alert" when ICE is actively detaining someone, three short blasts to warn that agents might be in the area. Volunteers position themselves outside schools, ready to sound the alarm and form crowds. Pamphlets even instruct people to "form a crowd" and "stay loud" when they see someone being "aggressively handled"—code for disrupting lawful arrests.
These tactics, especially endorsed by elected public officials, provide the permission structure for mobs to organize with the criminal intent of obstructing legitimate federal law enforcement. Interfering with ICE agents in the performance of their duties is a federal crime. Encouraging others to do so through coded signals is conspiracy and incitement.
We've grown accustomed to far-left activists engaging in childish, annoying, and outright illegal behavior without consequence—blocking highways, vandalizing property, and committing low-level assaults on police officers. But after 2020, Americans are done tolerating the two-tiered system of justice that shields the radical left while punishing everyone else.
Remember 2020? While law-abiding Minnesotans were locked in our homes under the edicts of tyrants like Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz—banned from running our businesses, attending church, or visiting dying loved ones in hospitals—rioters burned Minneapolis to the ground over three nights as Walz stood by and did nothing. Big-box stores and liquor stores stayed open, but worship services required a snitch line for neighbors to report one another.
That year exposed the double standard for what it is. And it was a paradigm shift. The American people are over it.
When Democrats are out of power, they flick on the green light for their vast network of activist organizations, providing material support for "disruptions" aimed at political gain. When they're in power, the red light comes on—no funding for protests, no shipped-in bricks. Most of these agitators lack the independent means to sustain chaos without that patronage.
Now, with President Trump's second term underway, the green light is back on. But this time, the tactics they've relied on for years won't work the same way. The public has seen too much.
What Rep. Gomez and others are doing is the literal version of a "dog whistle"—a coded signal to their base to break the law while maintaining just enough plausible deniability. It's no different from a mob boss filming a selfie video, issuing veiled hit orders. We created RICO laws precisely to combat organized criminal activity hidden behind innuendo and code.
If President Trump and Vice President Vance are serious about dismantling Antifa and far-left networks—as they've promised—then this kind of open incitement must face real criminal prosecution. Distributing whistles to orchestrate interference with federal agents isn't "community organizing." It's a conspiracy to commit crimes.
There's another unintended consequence: normalizing whistles as political signals will desensitize people to genuine cries for help. If blowing a whistle becomes synonymous with leftist mob actions against law enforcement, a real victim using one to signal actual danger—an assault, a robbery—will be less likely to get the help they need.
We now have the power to enforce the law equally, without favoritism. If we fail to hold these organizers accountable for inciting and conspiring to commit crimes, we'll only invite more chaos when the pendulum inevitably swings again.
The American people rejected the lawlessness of 2020 at the ballot box. It's time our justice system caught up.
