Immigration agent who shot man in Chicago-area traffic stop says injuries were ‘nothing major’

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal immigration agent called injuries caused by being dragged by a car “nothing major” in body camera footage released Tuesday showing the moments after an immigration enforcement officer fatally shot a Mexican immigrant in the Chicago area earlier this month.

Trump administration officials had previously said the officer was seriously injured by Silverio Villegas González, a Mexican immigrant who allegedly tried to evade arrest after the agents pulled over his car in suburban Franklin Park. The shooting escalated tensions amid a federal immigration crackdown in the country’s third-largest city that federal officials have said secured nearly 550 arrests.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Villegas González drove his car at officers, dragging one of them before the officer feared for his life and opened fire. Federal officials have said their officers were not wearing body cameras at the time.

But footage released Tuesday by the Franklin Park Police Department shows a local officer arriving at the roadside where a car had crashed into a cargo truck in the majority Hispanic suburb of Franklin Park, about 18 miles (29 kilometers) west of Chicago.

ICE agents attempt to explain to the police officer what had happened moments after an agent shot and killed Villegas González.

“He tried to run us over,” an ICE agent said, according to footage first reported Tuesday by the Chicago Sun-Times. The released video is about two minutes of the exchange. It cuts up the footage and blurs the faces of the officers involved.

Another federal agent said he was “dragged a little bit” while walking toward the local officer.

Immigrant rights advocates, Illinois’ top elected officials and Mexico’s president have called for a thorough investigation and more transparency and accountability.

“We want answers to questions that we have raised,” U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a Chicago Democrat, said Tuesday after the video was made public. “The family is entitled to it. The community wants to know what is going on, and the public deserves answers as well.”

Video footage also shows the first agent saying his partner had suffered “a left knee injury and some lacerations to his hands” while speaking over the radio, according to a similar account published Tuesday in the Chicago Tribune. The newspaper’s clip is less than a minute and does not blur faces.

“Nothing major,” the injured agent says while putting his arms up to shrug off concerns.

Federal officials had previously said the agent suffered “multiple” and “serious injuries.”

“His life was put at risk and he sustained serious injuries,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who visited Chicago for an immigration operation last week, posted on X. Marcos Charles, the acting head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, told The Associated Press on Friday that he had met with the officer in the hospital, saw his injuries and felt that the force used was appropriate. He declined further comment, saying there is an open investigation.

DHS officials did not return messages Tuesday.

ICE operations in Chicago have drawn comparisons to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles earlier this summer. In Los Angeles, at least two people died while attempting to evade ICE — a farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof during a raid and a man struck by an SUV while running from agents outside a Home Depot store.

Villegas González, who worked as a cook, had just dropped off one of his children at day care the morning of the shooting in the close-knit suburb of roughly 18,000 people.

The day care’s director described him as a good father while many Franklin Park residents came to vigils and remembered him as a kind family man.

The 38-year-old was from the state of Michoacan in western Mexico, according to the Consulate General of Mexico in Chicago, which said it would “closely monitor” the investigation.

___

Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this report.