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Human Rights Watch Demands Probe of Fatal ICE Shooting Near Chicago as Video Undermines DHS Claims
"As ICE ramps up its violent and discriminatory campaign of raids and detention against migrants and their communities, injuries and deaths will likely continue to rise," said a spokesperson for Human Rights Watch.
Sep 16, 2025
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called for an independent probe into US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's fatal shooting of a Mexican immigrant outside Chicago on Friday, as new video evidence seems to undermine the government's claims about what led to the shooting.
On Friday, as part of President Donald Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz," an ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old Mexican immigrant, during what the agency called "targeted law enforcement activity."
Villegas-Gonzalez was pronounced dead at the hospital, where the agent who shot him was also taken to be treated for severe injuries. On a GoFundMe page set up after his shooting, Villegas-Gonzalez's family revealed that he was killed "shortly after he dropped off his sons at school."
In a statement released after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security said that Villegas-Gonzalez "refused to follow law enforcement's commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers. 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." They described Villegas-Gonzalez as "a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving."
According to a report on Tuesday from the Chicago Sun-Times, the ICE agents at the scene were not wearing body cameras after Trump scrapped a policy requiring them. CCTV footage from local businesses has captured some of the events leading up to the shooting.
Human Rights Watch said that the publicly available footage contradicts DHS's version of events.
(Video: CBS News)
Belkis Wille, the associate director of the Human Rights Watch's crisis, conflict, and arms division, described the discrepancy:
The CCTV footage that has emerged does not show Villegas-Gonzalez’s car driving at or hitting law enforcement officers. In the footage, two officers stand on either side of Villegas-Gonzalez’ vehicle as he reverses away from the officers. One of the officers appears to hold onto the window frame on the driver's side, moving backward with the vehicle, and then forward as the vehicle drives out of frame of the CCTV camera. It is unclear why the ICE officer moves with the vehicle or whether he is being dragged.
"Law enforcement officers," Wille noted, "can only use lethal force when an individual poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or another person."
As protests erupted around the Chicagoland area, numerous public officials called for ICE to release more information about the shooting of Villegas-Gonzalez. According to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI have all refused to clarify who is investigating the incident.
"We’ve asked ICE for all of the information around it," Pritzker said Monday. "They have given very little."
He added that "if this were the Chicago Police Department, if this were the sheriff’s office in Cook County, if this were Illinois State Police, you would have had a lot more information already released."
Human Rights Watch said that instead of an internal investigation, there must be an independent probe that is not controlled by the Trump administration.
"As ICE ramps up its violent and discriminatory campaign of raids and detention against migrants and their communities, injuries and deaths will likely continue to rise," Wille said.
As of late August, ICE had deported more than 200,000 people since Trump returned to office. But while the Trump administration says they are going after "the worst of the worst," ICE data from early September shows that 71% held in ICE detention have no criminal convictions, while most of those who do have only minor offenses.
Only about 12% of those deported have been convicted of a crime that was violent or potentially violent. The Marshall Project reports that as of August, over 1,800 people with traffic violations, like Villegas-Gonzalez, had been deported.
At least 14 people, not including Villegas-Gonzalez, have died while in ICE custody since Trump retook office, a significant uptick from recent years.
"In the face of these developments and this fatal incident, transparent investigations into the causes of deaths and injuries during ICE actions are more critical than ever," Wille said. "Those responsible for violations of US law, as well as international human rights standards, should be held to account."
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ICE Shooting Near Chicago Shows Dangers of Trump ‘Midway Blitz’
“These are outcomes that serve no public safety purpose and leave entire communities traumatized," said one local community advocate. "Safe neighborhoods depend on trust, not fear."
Sep 12, 2025
As details emerged on Friday afternoon regarding the fatal shooting of a man in the Chicagoland town of Franklin Park by an immigration agent, a member of Congress said one thing was immediately clear: Just days into President Donald Trump's deployment of about 200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the nation's third-largest city, "Operation Midway Blitz is creating a climate of anxiety and fear" that has already turned deadly.
"This climate of fear increases the likelihood of circumstances that threaten our community's safety and the safety of our public safety officials, too," said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.).
An ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was trying to evade arrest and resorted to driving his car into the officers and dragging one of them, the Associated Press reported. The officer shot Villegas-Gonzalez, who was pronounced dead at a local hospital, where the agent was also taken to be treated for serious injuries.
ICE agents had stopped Villegas-Gonzalez and said he had a history of "reckless driving" and was an undocumented immigrant.
Erendira Rendón, chief program officer at immigration and economic justice group The Resurrection Project, said in a statement that the "horrific incident in Franklin Park shows us the real danger that militarized enforcement creates in our neighborhoods."
"A community member is dead, and an officer was injured," Rendón said. “These are outcomes that serve no public safety purpose and leave entire communities traumatized. Safe neighborhoods depend on trust, not fear. When federal agents conduct unaccountable operations in our communities, everyone becomes less safe.”
The shooting forced administrators at a nearby junior high school to place the school on lockdown.
The local news outlet Block Club Chicago reported that video of the incident was not immediately available.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat who has vehemently condemned Trump's deployment of federal agents—and potentially troops—to Chicago, called for the Department of Homeland Security to release "a full, factual accounting of what’s happened today to ensure transparency and accountability."
Thousands of Chicago residents have marched against Trump's decision to deploy ICE—possibly followed by the National Guard—to the city in an operation that the White House has claimed is being carried out in honor of a woman allegedly killed in a drunk driving accident by an undocumented immigrant around 140 miles away.
Also on Friday, residents protested at ICE's Broadview Village processing facility, where Block Club Chicago reported "pushing and shoving" took place between about 30 demonstrators and ICE agents in riot gear.
Like Trump's broader mass deportation agenda, the White House has claimed Operation Midway Blitz is aimed at carrying out the arrests of the "worst of the worst" violent criminals, but an analysis by the CATO Institute found that 93% of immigrants booked into ICE facilities in the first months of Trump's term have no history of violent crime convictions, and 65% have no criminal convictions at all.
One observer said of the killing of Villegas-Gonzalez, "it was only a matter of time" before ICE agents deployed to US cities fatally attacked an undocumented immigrant or other community member.
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ICE Operation 'Midway Blitz' Underway as Authoritarian Trump Targets Chicago
"Donald Trump and his departments of alphabet boys and National Guard troops aren't welcome and aren't needed in Chicago," said the head of the city's teachers union.
Sep 08, 2025
After several days of US President Donald Trump threatening a militarized invasion of Chicago, his administration on Monday announced "Operation Midway Blitz," claiming it is "in honor of" a young woman allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant accused of drunk driving about 140 miles south of the Illinois city.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unveiled the immigration operation with a nearly five-minute video featuring Michelle and Joe Abraham, whose 20-year-old daughter Katie was killed in a hit-and-run crash in Urbana in January. The alleged driver, a Guatemalan national, was arrested in Texas a few days later.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation "will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago," even though the libertarian CATO Institute revealed in June that 65% of immigrants booked by the agency under Trump had no criminal convictions and over 93% were never convicted of violent offenses.
Like Trump has in recent days, McLaughlin took aim at Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, saying that he "and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago's streets—putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals."
While Chicagoans have made their thoughts on a federal invasion clear, carrying signs that said "No Trump! No Troops!" and "No Nazis—No Kings" during a weekend protest, McLaughlin said that Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem "have a clear message: No city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return."
Pritzker and Chicago's Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, have forcefully pushed back against Trump's threats to launch a major anti-migrant operation in the city and possibly deploy the National Guard, as he has done in Washington, DC and Los Angeles, California.
In a New York Times opinion piece published hours before the widely anticipated DHS announcement, Johnson argued that "lowering crime rates here does not require an occupation of our city by armed members of the National Guard, as the White House continues to threaten us with. Chicagoans, including survivors of violence, have spoken out against such an extreme measure."
"If President Trump had listened to the city's leaders, he would recognize that Chicago just experienced record-low homicide numbers, making this the safest summer since the 1960s, a result of effective collaboration between communities and law enforcement," wrote the mayor, who signed an executive order ahead of the federal operation and is raising a family in Austin on the West Side, "one of the parts of our city where gun violence is most pervasive."
"My administration has managed to make progress in crime reduction with three interconnected strategies: effective and law-abiding policing, violence prevention, and addressing the root causes of crime," Johnson explained. "Our violence prevention work includes programs that employ former gang members to de-escalate conflicts as well as initiatives that connect people to jobs and resources."
"We have directed funding to neighborhoods that have suffered from chronic disinvestment to create jobs, provide mental health services, and more. We are on track to build, rehab, or preserve over 10,000 units of affordable housing," he continued. "We don't need the National Guard; we just need to invest in what works."
In a Monday statement, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates acknowledged "the successful efforts of our mayor in reducing crime and investing in our community," and similarly stressed that whatever Trump is "spending on his raids is better spent on building affordable housing, reopening school libraries, and funding social workers to support children through the trauma this administration is inflicting on an entire generation who are worried every day if they will ever see their parents again."
"As a history teacher, I can tell you that history will not look kindly on Donald Trump or the individuals who are acting as his personal army," Davis Gates also said. "For weeks, the people of Chicago have made it clear that we do not need federal agents in our city, whether that is to separate immigrant families or racially profile in our Black neighborhoods."
"Chicago might have been built to keep our communities divided, but we are coming together now, like working people do against any bad boss, in radical solidarity to keep each other safe," the union leader added. "Donald Trump and his departments of alphabet boys and National Guard troops aren't welcome and aren't needed in Chicago."
Congressional Democrats who represent Illinois have also denounced the president's targeting of the country's third-largest city—including Sen. Dick Durbin, who took to the chamber's floor on Monday following the DHS announcement. Durbin accused Trump of attacking Chicago for "political theater."
While the Trump administration hasn't yet provided any update on the involvement of the National Guard, after the president moved to rename the US Department of Defense, he took to his Truth Social platform on Saturday morning with an image referencing the 1979 film Apocalypse Now and said, "Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR."
Appearing on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), said that "we don't have any indications of them getting ready to send troops into Chicago," but also that "the president of the United States essentially just declared war on a major city in his own nation. This is not normal... This is not acceptable behavior."
Responding to the recent developments in a Monday statement, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the national advocacy group America's Voice, said that "we have gone from a supposed war on immigrants to a war on Americans."
"America's Voice has long said that immigration was merely the 'tip of the spear' for this administration to justify and lead an attack on all of us—including violating due process, constitutional rights, and core democratic norms and pillars, such as deploying the military against American communities," she noted. "Sadly, all are coming to pass."
Cárdenas continued: "Why is the American president openly threatening an American city, as he readies the deployment of American troops against those residents? It's not about immigration, just as the Washington, DC deployment wasn't about crime. Instead, it's for purposes of retribution; sowing fear and dissent; provoking violence and dividing us as a nation."
"Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court just sided with the president and his plans to target indiscriminately and racially profile with impunity, effectively making racial profiling now the law of the land," she added, citing a Monday decision from the chief justice. "Whether calling it 'authoritarianism' or something else, it's clear we are fighting not just for immigrants, but also for a different vision of America that's now imperiled."
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