The first police report on Silverio Villegas González’s death is seven sentences long.
It doesn’t name the immigration agent who shot him.
It doesn’t identify any witnesses, or the FBI personnel who showed up to investigate.
And it says nothing about the gun that was used.
Little about the case has been revealed since Villegas González was fatally shot by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Sept. 12, 2025 — four days after the Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz, the deportation campaign that rocked the Chicago area last fall.
Villegas González had dropped his kids off at school and was headed to work when two ICE agents tried to stop his car in Franklin Park and one of them opened fire. Villegas González had immigrated from Mexico and was targeted because he didn’t have legal status in the U.S.
Over the past year, his family and community has been left to grapple with painful, unanswered questions as interest in the case has waned.
The FBI won’t discuss its investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security has said that federal prosecutors declined to charge the agent who fired the deadly shots. Now, the Illinois State Police has opened an investigation.
But Jonathan Manes, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center who represents Villegas González’s family, says the lack of information has been troubling.
“It’s shocking that a year after the shooting, the federal government has refused to release any information about ICE officers that took a man’s life on our streets,” Manes says. “They haven’t even provided the name of the officer who shot Silverio and killed him.”
Manes says his team reviewed Franklin Park police records, along with a manual outlining procedures its officers are supposed to follow. “They failed to undertake basic steps to document the crucial aftermath … and then wiped their hands of it and turned it over to the FBI,” Manes says.
He says those failures could complicate the ongoing state investigation. There may have been other drivers or witnesses who could have provided firsthand accounts of the shooting, Manes says, but there’s no record of any statements.
Those witnesses could have helped establish where the ICE agent was standing when he fired. Villegas González was shot in the neck, suggesting the agent was alongside Villegas González’s vehicle when he fired — rather than directly in its path, Manes says.
It’s also unclear what happened to the ICE agent’s gun after the shooting.
Records from Franklin Park indicate the weapon was left at the scene with local cops, Manes says. But the records don’t say who ultimately took possession of the gun, or where it was sent.
“The weapon is an extremely important piece of evidence in any shooting,” Manes says. “And the fact that there’s no documentation at all about who had it, who it was given to, is pretty striking.”
Franklin Park quickly handed over the shooting investigation to the FBI. But Manes says his team still doesn’t know what federal investigators found.
Franklin Park officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mayor Barrett Pedersen previously said the village never probed the shooting because police were told by DHS that the FBI would investigate.
“I continue to call on the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to provide complete transparency regarding the results of their investigation into the death of Silverio Villegas González,” Pedersen wrote in May. “His family, and our community demand to know the results of their investigation.”
Homeland Security officials continue to say that Villegas González tried to flee a traffic stop and injured an officer by dragging him “a significant distance.” They complained of “disgusting” smears and misleading reporting.
But their credibility has been significantly damaged by other false or unproven claims tied to Midway Blitz. That’s in addition to a series of failed prosecutions tied to the campaign.
Villegas González’s family is calling for justice and want his name cleared.
“The administration has tried to justify his death by smearing his good name with lies and false narratives,” according to his brother, José Villegas González, and sister-in-law, Ana Villegas.
“A year has not erased or diminished the ache we feel in his absence.”
A year without answers
Once on scene, Franklin Park police scrambled to figure out who had jurisdiction over the shooting investigation, according to body camera footage. One officer asked if ISP was in charge.
“It’s a federal shooting,” then-Franklin Park Police Director Michael Witz replied. “They’re not gonna investigate a federal officer. We have to wait until [ICE] bosses get here.”
Soon after, Franklin Park police handed the case over to the FBI.
“FBI’s gonna take it over,” an officer tells fellow cops. “We’re just securing until they get here.”
An investigator with the Cook County medical examiner’s office also visited the scene and spoke to an FBI agent, who said the agency “would be taking jurisdiction of the case,” according to an autopsy report.
Witz handed emergency radio recordings over to the FBI days later, emails show. He also acknowledged having “numerous phone conversations and face to face conversation[s] with FBI and [Homeland Security Investigations] agents.”
The FBI says a U.S. Department of Justice policy prevents them from “commenting on the nature of any investigations that may or may not be occurring.”
Lawyers for Villegas González’s family believe the FBI closed its case in mid-October when they returned his car and personal belongings to relatives.
By April, Franklin Park asked a state police task force to conduct an investigation of the shooting — the same day the Illinois Accountability Commission released a damning report detailing the actions of federal agents during Midway Blitz. The commission concluded that “federal agents shot and killed Villegas González without apparent justification.”
In the request to ISP, Franklin Park police indicated the department didn’t have any evidence logs, use-of-force reports or photos from the scene.
The ISP investigation is still open, according to an agency spokesperson. It will likely culminate in a referral to Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, who would have to determine whether to bring charges.
The state’s attorney’s office has been “actively supporting” the ISP investigation, and similar probes led by Chicago police, O’Neill Burke says.
Her office has developed the state’s first protocol for use-of-force incidents involving on-duty federal agents. In July, it launched a working group to analyze “complex legal and evidentiary issues” that could arise from such cases, O’Neill Burke says.
“When we receive one, we will conduct a thorough review and will not hesitate to prosecute if the facts and the law support charges,” O’Neill Burke says.
A key legal question for prosecutors could be whether the agents who confronted Villegas González acted reasonably in the course of their duties.
DHS previously told the Sun-Times in July that the U.S. attorney’s office had declined to prosecute the ICE agent who shot Villegas González. The feds haven’t publicly explained why.
Meantime, Mexico has also sought answers.
Officials for the country called for an investigation and sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. government, according to Reyna Torres Mendívil, Mexico’s consul general in Chicago. There had been no official response by July. Mexico later called for investigations into the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals that were linked to immigration enforcement, including Villegas González’s.
The officials say that Mexico continues to assist Villegas González’s family in a child custody case and is closely following the legal proceedings.
‘Silverio was killed twice’
Community members, immigrant rights organizers and faith leaders have spent the past year trying to keep Villegas González’s name alive.
Marien Casillas Pabellón, executive director of PASO – West Suburban Action Project, is helping organize a march Saturday to mark the anniversary of Villegas González’s death and renew calls for transparency.
“Part of our march Saturday is to make sure he isn’t forgotten,” Casillas Pabellón says.
She remembers the confusion in Franklin Park as local and federal law enforcement responded to the shooting.
Children were placed under lockdown inside a nearby school as parents tried to figure out what was happening. By the time Casillas Pabellón arrived, Villegas González had been taken away. She remembers his car, and the blood on the pavement.
“Some people in the community were watching from their windows, trying to see what was happening,” Casillas Pabellón says, speaking in Spanish.
PASO and other immigrant rights organizations began trying to locate his family and gather information. They organized a news conference, and someone brought candles and flowers to the corner where Villegas González had been shot.
Members of Hijas del Pueblo, a grassroots group of women and neighbors from Franklin Park and surrounding communities, continued tending to the site, maintaining the flowers and turning the corner into a place of remembrance and community.
A year later, residents have successfully pushed Franklin Park for a permanent memorial to Villegas González.
Casillas Pabellón says he was “killed twice.”
“They killed him that day during the traffic stop,” she says, “and they killed him again with all the lies they told about him afterward.”
She notes that Villegas González’s death received far less national attention than later shootings by federal immigration agents. She questions whether race played a role in the disparity.
Casillas Pabellón wants people to know the person behind the headlines: a father who was responsible for his children and continued working and providing for his family despite his own health problems. “So we continue making sure that his story is known,” she says.
The Rev. Brendan Curran was among the faith leaders who got involved after Villegas González was killed. A longtime immigrant rights advocate in Chicago, Curran says Villegas González’s death — and the immigration enforcement that followed — brought faith leaders and community organizations together in ways he hadn’t seen in more than two decades of immigrant rights work.
Curran says the lack of answers about the shooting amounts to a “deliberate, intentional cover-up.” He was particularly angered by what he describes as “fake news” spread by the federal government in the aftermath of the shooting.
He insists the feds politicized the shooting “on the back of a dead person who was killed in cold blood.”
For Curran, keeping Villegas González’s memory alive means remembering him as a father.
“A father trying to make ends meet,” Curran says. “A father trying to earn some money so that kids have a better, stable future. A parent trying to make sure kids are dropped off at school.”