Illinois State Police investigating fatal ICE shooting of Silverio
Villegas González
[May 07, 2026]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — Eight months after a federal immigration agent shot and killed
a man in the earliest days of “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Illinois
State Police has opened an investigation into the fatal shooting.
The investigation was prompted by a request last week from the police
department of Franklin Park, a near-west suburb of Chicago where
Silverio Villegas González was fatally shot on Sept. 12, 2025. Shortly
after Villegas González dropped off his children at school and daycare
on that Friday morning, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
pulled him over and, in the altercation that followed, shot him in the
neck.
The call for an ISP probe came the same day a state panel appointed by
Gov. JB Pritzker published a 204-page report detailing alleged
misconduct by on-duty federal immigration agents during the Trump
administration’s Chicago-focused mass deportation campaign last fall.
After a series of hearings, the Illinois Accountability Commission
issued findings that federal agents engaged in “patterns of illegal and
violent conduct,” according to commission chair and former U.S. District
Judge Ruben Castillo.
After its April 30 release, the report and other materials from the
investigation were forwarded to several law enforcement agencies,
including the Franklin Park Police Department.
ISP spokesperson Melaney Arnold confirmed the investigation, specifying
that Franklin Park Police requested a review from the ISP’s Public
Integrity Task Force, which investigates officer-involved shootings
across the state. The investigation is already underway.
“When complete, the case will be turned over to the Cook County State’s
Attorney’s Office,” Arnold said in a statement, declining to provide
additional information “at this time.”
Push for a special prosecutor
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke has spent months
fending off a political pressure campaign from a growing number of
public officials and community leaders demanding she open investigations
into immigration agents’ alleged wrongdoing. But the prosecutor
maintains her office has limited legal authority to do so without a
request from law enforcement, which she has not received.
Burke spokesperson Elyssa Cherney confirmed the state’s attorney’s
office has “been in contact with ISP and will play a supportive role in
their investigation.”
“We are unable to comment further on a pending law enforcement
investigation,” she said.
In the meantime, a Cook County judge is weighing whether to appoint a
special prosecutor to investigate — and possibly charge — immigration
agents for alleged abuses in lieu of Burke. After lengthy arguments in
and out of court, a decision in the matter is set for Monday, May 11.
More than 400 Cook County residents, including elected officials and
community leaders, have signed on to a petition for a special
prosecutor, accusing Burke of “abdicating her duty.” A lawyer for the
coalition argued in court last month that federal agents’ alleged
behavior was “textbook law enforcement misconduct,” which any state’s
attorney has a responsibility to look into when a law enforcement agency
is refusing to investigate itself.
Burke’s office said it has not received any requests for investigation
from law enforcement agencies. She’s also pointed to federal agents’
relative immunity from state prosecution under the U.S. Constitution’s
supremacy clause and Illinois Supreme Court precedent.
In a March court filing, lawyers for Burke’s office argued that if she —
or a special prosecutor — were to bring charges against agents without
following proper protocol, they’d risk being thrown out on appeal, thus
undermining the coalition’s accountability goals.
“Investigating and charging a case simply to have it dismissed before
trial … would bring no accountability for any criminal acts arising out
of Operation Midway Blitz and does nothing to advance the public
interest,” the filing said.
In February, as the pressure to prosecute grew louder, Burke’s office
put together guidelines for handling any future investigations of
federal agents. The protocol, which was written with guidance from
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, stipulates the state’s attorney’s
Law Enforcement Review Unit can help investigate once a law enforcement
agency “believes that there is sufficient evidence to support felony
charging and is seeking felony review.”
The protocol also outlines how the state’s attorney’s office can request
evidence from the federal government. While Burke’s office itself
doesn’t have subpoena power, a grand jury would. It also has the option
to send a voluntary “Touhy request” to the feds. Following immigration
agents’ fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January,
the Hennepin County prosecutor made such requests of the Trump
administration, then sued when the asks were rebuffed.
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Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly is pictured in the
governor’s office in Springfield in 2022. (Capitol News Illinois
photo by Jerry Nowicki)
But a future Democratic presidential administration may be inclined to
answer the requests, which could set in motion a wave of new or stalled
investigations and prosecutions into federal agents’ behavior.
Villegas González shooting
The fatal shooting of Villegas González was one of several Operation
Midway Blitz flashpoints scrutinized by the Illinois Accountability
Commission.
Witnesses who testified at commission hearings noted Villegas González’s
death received much less media attention, especially from national news
outlets, than those of white U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti at
the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis. Those shootings were caught
on video, while the agents who shot Villegas González were not wearing
body cameras, according to reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times.
The shooting of Marimar Martinez, an American citizen of Hispanic
heritage, only began to receive widespread focus outside of the Chicago
area after the Minneapolis shooting deaths. She was shot five times by
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents in early October but the next
month, authorities dropped all charges that they briefly filed against
her.
Villegas González, 38, was a Mexican national who’d been living in the
U.S. since 2007. On Sept. 12, ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle pulled
him over 2 ½ blocks from his younger son’s daycare. The Illinois
Accountability Commission reviewed multiple videos, including security
footage. It showed federal agents leaning against his car from both the
driver’s and passenger’s side windows for about eight seconds before
Villegas González began to reverse his vehicle, then pulled forward into
an open lane of traffic, away from the agents.
One of the agents fired shots at Villegas González, who then crashed
into a parked delivery truck. He was pronounced dead an hour later at a
nearby hospital. The Cook County Medical Examiner found Villegas
González sustained two bullet wounds: One entered through the back of
his neck and remained in his chest, while another grazed two of his
fingers.
After the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security issued a
statement claiming Villegas González had “refused to follow law
enforcements commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers,”
hitting one of the ICE agents and dragging him “a significant distance.”
The statement also implied the agent received medical treatment for
“multiple injuries.”
But according to body-worn camera video from a Franklin Park Police
officer who responded to the scene, one of the agents described the cuts
and bruises to his knees, elbows and hands as “nothing major.” The other
agent told the officer that Villegas González “tried to run us over.”
The DHS statement defended the agents’ response: “Fearing for his own
life, the officer fired his weapon,” the news release said.
In a subsequent statement, DHS also called Villegas González “a criminal
illegal alien with a history of reckless driving,” though Cook County
court records show that only one of his four traffic citations between
2010 and 2019 was for driving above the speed limit, according to
reporting from Block Club Chicago. The other three were for driving with
an expired license and without vehicle insurance.
According to Franklin Park Police body-worn camera footage, Franklin
Park’s then-police chief Michael Witz told another officer that local
law enforcement couldn’t investigate the shooting.
“No, because it’s a federal shooting; you’re not gonna investigate a
federal officer,” Witz said. “We have to wait ‘til their bosses get
here.”
According to the Illinois State Police, the FBI is the “primary
investigating agency,” but it has not made public any findings about the
incident in the eight months since it happened.
In its report, the Illinois Accountability Commission determined “there
is reasonable cause to believe that federal agents shot and killed
Villegas González without apparent justification.”
The commission cited a 2023 DHS use-of-force policy that prohibits
immigration agents from shooting a firearm “solely … to disable moving
vehicles.” The policy also stipulates that deadly force may only be used
to prevent escape if an agent reasonably believes “the subject poses a
significant threat of death or serious physical harm” to the agent or
others and that such force “is necessary to prevent escape.”
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