A man fatally shot by federal immigration agents on Friday in Franklin Park had dropped off his child at school minutes before he was shot.
That’s according to U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who spoke at a news conference Saturday outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s processing facility in Broadview.
The man — formally identified Saturday by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez — was shot by an ICE officer after the agency says Villegas-Gonzalez tried to flee a traffic stop and struck an officer with his car.
ICE said its agents were conducting “targeted law enforcement activity” in Franklin Park when they stopped the vehicle. The agency said Villegas-Gonzalez resisted arrest and tried to drive his car into officers, dragging one of them.
According to ICE, an officer shot Villegas-Gonzalez, who was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
The injured ICE officer, who had been hospitalized, has been released after being treated for “severe back injuries, lacerations to the hand and substantial tears on his knee,” the federal Department of Homeland Security said Saturday.
The Mexican consulate said Villegas-Gonzalez was from Michoacán, Mexico, and worked as a cook. It said it has contacted his family and is requesting more information from ICE about the circumstances of the shooting.
Ramirez said she and other elected officials will demand an investigation into the shooting.
“It is important for people to understand that, yes, we are living in times that perhaps feel unprecedented, but we have seen these attacks before,” Ramirez said. “We will rise from these attacks.”
Cook County court records show Villegas-Gonzalez’s record involved four citations for traffic violations since 2010. The most recent was in 2019 for operating an uninsured vehicle. That case was thrown out within a month. The other three citations were for speeding, driving with an expired license and operating an uninsured vehicle.
Manuel Cardenas, a lawyer who represented Villegas-Gonzalez in a traffic case, said Saturday that his former client wasn’t a violent criminal and that he was shocked to hear of Villegas-Gonzalez’s death.
“They are vilifying him, they’re making him look up to be like some monster, which he wasn’t,” Cardenas said. “He was just a working man. Probably got startled.
“There was no indication from when I met with him that he was a violent man or that he was interested in hurting anybody.”
Contributing: Adriana Cardona-Maguigad
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