ICE Murders Immigrant Worker During Traffic Stop Outside Chicago

Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.

On September 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fatally shot 38-year-old Mexican immigrant Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez during a traffic stop in a working class Hispanic-majority suburb of Chicago. Chicago Tribune reports Villegas-Gonzalez worked at factory or warehouse and had a girlfriend and two young children, according to one of his neighbors. He was murdered after dropping his children off at school.

Police allege that Villegas-Gonzalez struck an ICE officer with his vehicle in an attempt to escape his abductors. ICE agents across the country have been documented to torture abducted workers and hold them in concentration camps while awaiting deportation to oftentimes dangerous locations. A bystander video shows that after ICE shot him, they restrained his hands behind his back as he bled out on the side of the road.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defended the murder, stating that the ICE officer “followed his training, used appropriate force and properly enforced the law.”

Villegas-Gonzales reportedly had a few minor traffic violations on his record, but no criminal history. The murder coincides with ICE’s actions across the country, using minor, non-criminal violations as a pretext for violent attacks and deportation.

According to his family’s GoFundMe fundraiser page, Villegas-Gonzales “was someone who always extended a helping hand, shared his smile freely, and showed up for those he loved — no matter the circumstances.”

Democrat mafia member U.S. Representative Jesus Garcia held a news conference Friday calling for a “full investigation” of the shooting. During the conference, Garcia was drowned out by protesters chanting “Don’t investigate, abolish ICE!”, highlighting growing mass anger against the Democrat mafia’s toothless and farcical opposition to ICE. Democrats vote to fund ICE and opportunistically turn around to decry some of its most blatant abuses against the people, indicating a contradiction among the imperialist ruling class in how to most effectively overcome the economic crisis.

The murder comes as Trump has threatened to go to “war” with Chicago by sending in ICE and the National Guard in what he is calling “Chipocolypse Now,” a reference to the 1979 film Apocalypse Now about the U.S. imperialist war of aggression against Vietnam. Also in connection with the movie, Trump wrote on social media, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” referring to the movie’s famous line by a particularly genocidal U.S. lieutenant who said, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” after bombing villages in Vietnam with the chemical agent. The post was accompanied by what appears to be an AI-generated image of Trump’s face in the place of the genocidal lieutenant.

While Trump later walked back his threats in the face of massive anti-Trump protests in Chicago, DHS later initiated “Operation Midway Blitz” on September 8, a terror campaign of increased ICE abductions focused on so-called “sanctuary cities” in Illinois, particularly Chicago. Just days after the operation began, ICE agents murdered Villegas-Gonzalez.

Chicago and its suburbs are home to a large immigrant and Spanish-speaking population, making it a target of the government’s deportation drive as it seeks to overcome the imperialist economic crisis by destroying the means of production, forcibly reducing the size of the labor force, and thereby increasing competition among workers and driving wages down. As the state increases the militarization of its police forces to meet these objectives, the masses and especially the working class increase their resistance.

Photo: Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez and his two sons. Retrieved from his family’s GoFundMe fundraiser page.

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