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delia ramirez
Bodycam Footage Casts Further Doubt on ICE Narrative of Fatal Shooting Outside Chicago
"An ICE agent shot Silverio dead," said Chicago's Rep. Delia Ramirez. "DHS lied about what happened."
Sep 23, 2025
Local police body camera footage released Monday has further called into question the government's justification for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent's fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old father of two, in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park on September 12 during a traffic stop.
In a statement justifying the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 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.”
Video footage of the incident recorded by local businesses had already raised doubts about the government's version of events, showing that Villegas-Gonzalez had not initially driven his car forward toward the agents, but that one of them had instead grabbed ahold of his window frame as he attempted to reverse.
Federal law enforcement's refusal to provide information on the shooting has raised further suspicion, leading Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) and groups like Human Rights Watch to call for independent investigations.
The ICE agents who conducted the arrest were not wearing body cameras at the scene after the Trump administration scrapped a policy requiring them.
According to Belkis Wille, the associate director of the Human Rights Watch’s crisis, conflict, and arms division, who wrote about the shooting last week, “law enforcement officers can only use lethal force when an individual poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or another person.”
But the body camera footage from a Franklin Park police officer who responded to the scene, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, has cast doubt on DHS's claims that one of the agents involved in the shooting had been severely injured.
(Video: Chicago Sun-Times)
In the video, the injured agent is shown with a large hole in his blue jeans, revealing a scraped knee. Over the radio, the other agent is heard explaining to police that his partner had suffered "a left knee injury and some lacerations to his hands.”
The injured agent said it was "Nothing major,” and his partner reiterated: “Nothing major."
Later, after his partner was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, the other agent was heard explaining: "I think we’re good, man. Just shooken up a little."
This video footage directly contradicts the description of events presented by DHS, that the agent “sustained multiple injuries” and was “seriously injured” by Villegas-Gonzalez's car.
Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Chicago native, reacted to the video on social media: "An ICE agent shot Silverio dead. DHS lied about what happened."
"There needs to be a full, thorough investigation into what happened that morning," she added. "All camera footage must be released. And [Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi] Noem must come to the committee and account for ICE's unlawfulness and lies."
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Omar, Ramirez Among First in Congress to Decry 'Unconstitutional' Trump Strike on Boat
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Sep 04, 2025
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
" Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
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House Dems Condemn Trump's Militarization of Federal Agents and Demand 'No Troops on Our Streets'
"We don't need Trump's troops on our streets," said Rep. Delia Ramirez. "What we need and what our constituents continue to say is that we need an investment in our neighborhoods."
Sep 03, 2025
Following US President Donald Trump's declaration that "we're going on" with a deployment of federal agents to Chicago, the nation's third-largest city and a frequent target of fearmongering by the president, Congresswoman Delia Ramirez led Democratic lawmakers in condemning the White House's threat to militarize federal troops in cities across the country.
Trump's persistent, baseless claims that large cities like Washington, DC; Chicago; and Los Angeles are facing violent crime waves are part of an attempt, suggested Ramirez (D-Ill.), to distract from the fact that his administration and Republicans in Congress are slashing funding that millions of people rely on.
"We have less than 30 days to pass a spending budget," said Ramirez, who represents parts of Chicago. "And yet here we are, the president is attempting to send the National Guard and terrorize cities instead of actually funding the government. See, we don't need Trump's troops on our streets. What we need and what our constituents continue to say is that we need an investment in our neighborhoods. We need an investment in food for our tables, healthcare for our families, and safety that is rooted in justice and opportunity."
Trump's comments about Chicago came Tuesday and followed plans to deploy 200 Homeland Security officials to the city and use a nearby naval base as a staging area, as part of his nationwide anti-immigration crackdown.
The White House has said it's overseen the arrests of more than 65,000 people by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since Trump took office in January, but the Cato Institute found in June that 65% of people rounded up by the agency had no criminal conviction, while 93% had no conviction for violence offenses.
Trump's threat against Chicago also came as a federal judge ruled that his use of federal troops in Los Angeles was illegal. The president deployed Marine and National Guard soldiers to the city more than two months ago, and about 300 members of the National Guard remain there to crack down on protests against ICE raids and "ensure that federal immigration law was enforced."
Last month, the president sent the National Guard to Washington, DC and federalized the police force of the nation's capital, claiming he planned to rid the city of "slums" and ordering the destruction of encampments inhabited by homeless people.
Since that deployment, law enforcement agents have subjected local residents to illegal searches and unfairly charged them with serious crime, threatening them with lengthy prison sentences.
On Wednesday, Ramirez noted that as with ICE raids that are targeting people without criminal records despite Trump's claims to the contrary, the president is threatening to send troops to cities including Chicago to crack down on crime waves that aren't happening.
Thanks to investments in communities across Chicago, said Ramirez, "violent crime rates have fallen 22% today. Homicides are down more than 33% in the past year, while shootings are down by 38%."
Trump's actions in Washington, DC and his threats against Chicago, added the congresswoman, "are not just about one city."
"When armed troops are sent into American communities to suppress protests, to target civil society leaders, or to facilitate the disappearance of our neighbors, it is not just a local issue," said Ramirez. "It strikes at the core of our very own democracy... This moment demands courage. It demands that we understand that we must obstruct and do everything we can to oppose any of these authoritarian against our cities."
Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) also spoke at the press conference, warning that Trump's threat against Chicago is a "dangerous sign that the president is signaling to turn American troops on American citizens on American soil."
Ramirez said legislative action, legal challenges, and organizing on the ground are needed to fight back against Trump's attacks on cities.
At the press conference, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said she was introducing two bills to give Washington, DC full control over the National Guard and its police department, and renewed her call for the passage of legislation that would grant statehood to the nation's capital.
"Our local police force should not be subject to federalization, an action that wouldn't be possible for any other police department in the country," said Norton. "Although DC's lack of statehood makes it more vulnerable to the president's abuses of power, he has frequently made it known that his authoritarian ambitions do not end with DC."
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