ICE Kills Immigrant Father After Traffic Stop, Detains Day Laborer Who Sued Chicago Police

ICE's Operation Midway Blitz" in Chicago is entering its second week of ramped-up immigration enforcement. Community members are mourning the loss of Silverio Villegas Gonzales, a 38-year-old single father and Mexican immigrant who was shot and killed by ICE agents while trying to avoid arrest at a traffic stop. Villegas Gonzales was unarmed and had no criminal record. His family has organized a fundraiser to help cover the costs of his funeral and burial. "ICE stopped a man right after he dropped off his child at school, because he's Brown, because maybe he looked like he worked a minimum-wage job, and then shot him to death," says Congressmember Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois, who is calling for a full investigation into Villegas Gonzales's death and for ICE to be defunded. The footage, the witnesses we have talked to do not match what the ICE reports show," she says, calling ICE a terror organization" with no guardrails."

Meanwhile, ICE agents have abducted" a man who is suing a group of off-duty Chicago police officers, working as security for Home Depot, for abuse. Kevin Herrera, the legal director of Raise the Floor Alliance and an attorney for Willian Gimenez Gonzalez, says Gimenez is being retaliated against for his lawsuit, which accuses the security guards of beating and bringing trespassing charges against immigrant day laborers in order to push them into the criminal legal system. Willian was double-profiled, and now he's suffering consequences within the ICE detention system," says Herrera.