ICE Shot a Man While Trying to Detain Him. He Had No Criminal Record.

The Department of Homeland Security blatantly lied about the victim of a recent shooting committed by an ICE agent during an immigration arrest in Chicago.

Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, 38, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Franklin Park during an attempted immigration detention. DHS claimed Villegas-Gonzalez had resisted arrest and dragged an officer for “a significant distance” with his car. Nearby surveillance footage revealed the agent fired two shots, and Villegas-Gonzalez died from his injuries later at a hospital.

But the agency’s justification of deadly force doesn’t quite add up.

On September 19, DHS published a press release that claimed that Villegas-Gonzalez was “a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving.” But apparently, that’s completely wrong: NBC News reported that he had no criminal history. Villegas-Gonzalez had pleaded guilty to four traffic violations, including speeding, the most recent of which was in 2013.

The federal press release also claimed that the ICE agent responsible for the shooting had been “seriously injured” in the line of duty. But bodycam videos from Franklin Park police officers shortly after the incident showed the ICE agent describing his injuries as “nothing major,” NBC News reported Monday.

It’s not clear why ICE had targeted Villegas-Gonzalez in the first place. David J. Bier, the immigration director for the Cato Institute, wrote on X that ICE had manufactured the incident through a needless traffic stop.

“ICE tried to grab him just after dropping off his two little kids at day care. There is no reason why this interaction needed to happen at all,” Bier wrote, adding, “Desperate people in desperate spots can make stupid decisions like this guy did. But ICE shouldn’t manufacture these situations either.”

Additionally, one witness speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times claimed that ICE’s account of the fatal shooting had been inaccurate, and questioned whether the incident would be properly investigated. Neither of the officers involved in the incident were wearing body cameras, even though policy requires they wear them “as soon as practicable at the beginning of an Enforcement Activity and deactivation when the activity is concluded.”

A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Illinois Representatives Jesús “Chuy” García and Delia C. Ramirez, as well as Senators Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, and Tammy Duckworth sent a letter Tuesday to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Director Todd Lyons demanding that DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari investigate the shooting.

It’s not entirely surprising that ICE would pursue an arrest of someone with no criminal conviction, or that they would lie about it. A Cato Institute study from June found that 65 percent of ICE detainees since October 2024 had no criminal record, and 95 had no violent criminal convictions.

DHS’s press release about Villegas-Gonzalez claimed that ICE law enforcement was facing a 1,000 percent increase in assaults against them, up from a nearly 700 percent increase in July. But considering that there were just 10 assaults against ICE agents during the same period last year, that places the total number of purported assaults at roughly 100.

That figure doesn’t seem all that terrifying, especially when considering all of the wildly inconsistent and patently phony allegations of assault that have come to light as the Justice Department consistently struggles to secure indictments against protesters accused of assaulting immigration officials.