FBI agents investigate the scene in Franklin Park, Illinois, after Friday's fatal shooting. Photo / Joshua Lott, The Washington Post
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man in the Chicago area during an attempted arrest after the man drove his vehicle toward law enforcement officials and struck an officer, federal authorities said.
The Department of Homeland Security identified the man in Friday’s incident as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez and said he was an immigrant living in the country illegally.
Villegas-Gonzalez resisted when Ice officers attempted to detain him at a traffic stop, authorities said in a news release. The officer was “dragged a significant distance” by the man’s car and suffered multiple injuries, authorities said. “Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon,” according to the news release.
The officer is in stable condition. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify Villegas-Gonzalez’s immigration status or reach anyone associated with him.
“We are praying for the speedy recovery of our law enforcement officer,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in the statement. “He followed his training, used appropriate force, and properly enforced the law to protect the public and law enforcement.”
The incident took place in Franklin Park, Illinois, a suburb northwest of Chicago, just days after the Trump administration announced the start of a stepped-up immigration enforcement action in the Chicago area titled “Operation Midway Blitz”.
Local officials and immigrant advocates said arrests began Sunday. The Chicago operation comes after the administration has recently ramped up enforcement in Los Angeles, Washington and Boston, drawing protests from immigrant-rights activists and local residents over the tactics used by federal officers.
In some instances, the confrontations have grown tense or violent, and President Donald Trump mobilised National Guard troops to support the operations in Los Angeles and Washington. He has threatened to send the Guard to Chicago over the objections of Democratic state and local leaders, though he has not yet done so.
Shortly after reports of the Franklin Park shooting incident became public, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said on X: “I am aware of the troubling incident that has unfolded in Franklin Park. This is a developing situation and the people of Illinois deserve a full, factual accounting of what’s happened today to ensure transparency and accountability.”
Witnesses in the neighbourhood described hearing a crash early Friday in which a sedan was left smoking and pinned beneath a parked tractor-trailer. Streaks of blood stained the driver’s side of the crushed car, according to Ozzy Lopez, who ran outside from his kitchen when he heard the crash.
Lopez said he saw law enforcement officials moving a man who appeared to be Hispanic to the sidewalk in front of an animal hospital. The driver-side door of the vehicle was left open and there was a trail of blood along the asphalt, he said.
“I saw police pull a man away from the car and out of my sight,” said Lopez, who owns a local plumbing business. “This morning, my neighbours were telling us there was Ice presence, but we didn’t know if it was a rumour. This is a very Hispanic neighbourhood.”
Within minutes, law enforcement, including some wearing jackets emblazoned with “FBI,” arrived on the scene along with a fire engine, witnesses said. Jose Pedro de Blas did not realise something had happened until his boss told him about the growing police presence a block away. He checked his job’s surveillance footage to see if it captured anything about the shooting.
“I heard two gunshots,” he said. “It happened in front of [a] vet hospital, you can hear the shots.”
One witness video, posted to the social media accounts of a local musician named Javier Meza, showed smoke rising from beneath the car’s mangled bonnet and a trail of blood spots, shattered glass and a single shoe on the road. The video pans upward to show two law enforcement officers pulling on gloves and treating a person slumped on their side.
A man’s voice is heard appearing to make an emergency call: “Hi, yes, I’m a CDL truck driver and a car hit my trailer because I think Ice tried to pull him over …” The video cuts out as one of the officers gestures and says something indiscernible to the camera operator.
Meza, who posted the video and tagged a Latino civil rights organisation, did not respond to texts, messages or phone calls.
Since Trump took office, threats and assaults against federal immigration officers and their local law enforcement partners have spiked, according to DHS. The agency recorded 79 assaults on Ice officers between January 21 and June 30, authorities said, compared with 10 during the same period in 2024 under the Biden administration. DHS officials said the rate has increased more over the northern hemisphere’s summer months, but they have not provided updated statistics.
Federal officials have also declined to provide details about all of the incidents, dozens of which have resulted in criminal charges, according to a Washington Post review of court records. According to that review, the vast majority involve verbal threats – in person or online – or physical altercations during Ice arrests of immigrants that turned violent.
But prosecutors have failed to win indictments in several felony cases and reduced the charges to misdemeanours. Some migrants and US citizens who have been accused of assault have said federal officers misrepresented what happened or were the instigators of physical confrontations.
In a joint statement, US Representatives Jesús “Chuy” Garcia and Delia C. Ramirez and Illinois state Representative Norma Hernandez, all of whom are Democrats, said Friday’s incident led to school lockdowns and fear in their community.
“We warned that Ice’s aggressive tactics and disregard for due process were a violent escalation,” the lawmakers said. “We urge our community to remain peaceful; we also urge DHS and Ice to stop their inflammatory rhetoric and actions, and to be transparent about this incident, including through the release of relevant warrants and body-camera footage.”
Eréndira Rendón, of the Chicago-based advocacy group the Resurrection Project, called the incident “horrific” and criticised Ice’s “militarised” enforcement operation.
“These are outcomes that serve no public safety purpose and leave entire communities traumatised. Safe neighbourhoods depend on trust, not fear,” she said in a statement. “When federal agents conduct unaccountable operations in our communities, everyone becomes less safe.”
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