CHICAGO — Police records and witness accounts from a Chicago suburb where a man was fatally shot by a federal immigration enforcement agent earlier this month complicate the picture of the event presented by the US Department of Homeland Security, which said the agent fired his weapon after the man drove his vehicle toward agents.
Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, was pulled over and eventually shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois on September 12, just after dropping off his two children at Passow Elementary School and Small World Learning Centre, a daycare located blocks away from the incident.
In the shooting incident, the agent fired his weapon and Villegas Gonzalez crashed his car into a delivery truck.
Bodycam footage, which Reuters obtained on Tuesday, captures an interview with the truck driver, named in police records as Josue Hernandez-Rodriguez.
“He was trying to escape from them,” Hernandez-Rodriguez said.
In multiple statements, DHS has said the agent, who has not been identified, responded with lethal force because he was “fearing for his own life.” But in bodycam footage, the agent, in a bullet-resistant police vest and torn jeans, described his injuries as “nothing major.”
The shooting has been the most violent case in a wave of aggressive ICE actions taken as part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” a surge in immigration enforcement in the Chicago area that began earlier this month. The administration said the operation was necessary because of city and state “sanctuary” laws that limit local police cooperation with federal authorities.
DHS said in a statement on September 12 after the incident its agent fatally shot Villegas Gonzalez, whom the agency said was in the US illegally, during a vehicle stop to arrest him.
“He refused to follow law enforcement’s commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers,” the statement said. “One of the ICE officers was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance. Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon.”
