Could the Illinois State Police investigation into a fatal Franklin Park ICE shooting produce charges?
Illinois State Police have launched an investigation into the ICE shooting in Franklin Park that killed an undocumented father last September. But will it result in charges being filed?
On Sept. 12, 2025, an ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, an undocumented migrant from Mexico and father of two, during a traffic stop. At the time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security claimed Villegas had tried to use his car to drive into immigration agents as they tried to detain him. DHS officials also claimed the ICE agent who opened fire had been dragged and suffered "severe injuries."
Surveillance video from two local business show federal agents in a Jeep and Villegas-Gonzalez in a Subaru being pulled over. With one agent on each side of his car, the videos show Villegas-Gonzalez backing up and driving away after one appears to try to open his passenger side door.
As he drives away, two gunshots are heard in another video. You can't see what happened to the officer on the car's driver side, who is the officer DHS said shot Villegas-Garcia.
Body cam footage released by the Franklin Park Police Department two weeks later revealed that agent brushing off his injuries in contradiction to DHS's statement.
"I got dragged a little bit," he says. "Nothing major."
On the bodycam video, they note a "left knee injury" and "some lacerations to his hands."
By contrast, Homeland Security's statement claimed the agent feared for his life after Villegas-Gonzalez "resisted arrest, attempted to flee the scene and dragged a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent a significant distance with his car."
There have been calls for a more thorough investigation into the deadly shooting for months, and now Illinois State Police confirmed they are doing so. But whether that investigation ends with charges being filed remains an open question.
The Cook County State's Attorney's Office has said they will consider any evidence presented to them for potential charges. But CBS News Chicago legal analyst Irv Miller said they will have to answer an important question when considering that evidence.
"If he wasn't doing an action that was necessary and proper, wasn't reasonable under the circumstances, then the agent can be charged," Miller explained. "Otherwise, under federal law, under the U.S. Constitution, the State's Attorney of Cook County legally cannot charge the officer on duty."
State police announced their investigation just a week after Gov. JB Pritzker's office released findings by the Illinois Accountability Commission, which looked into this incident along with 15 other high-interest incidents during the federal immigration crackdown the Trump administration called Operation Midway Blitz.
The mayor of Franklin Park admitted he has been frustrated with the lack of explanation for what happened in this case.
Simultaneously, a group of advocates has filed in court to have a special prosecutor appointed to work on possible cases involving agents and actions in Operation Midway Blitz because they feel the state's attorney hasn't done enough. A judge is set to rule on that request on May 11.
