Mexican Town Mourns Father Killed by ICE Agent in Chicago

Family and friends gathered Friday in a small Mexican town to grieve and demand justice for a 38-year-old father of two who was shot dead earlier this month by a U.S. immigration agent during an attempted arrest in suburban Chicago.

Eighteen years ago, Silverio Villegas González left Irimbo, a town in the Mexican state of Michoacán, for the United States. On September 12, he was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. His body returned home in a coffin on Thursday.

By Friday afternoon, a somber procession accompanied the casket to its final resting place.

“We are in so much pain,” his elder brother Jorge Villegas told Reuters through tears. “At least my brother is here now. We can finally give him a Christian burial.”

Villegas was killed just after dropping his two children off at a nearby elementary school and daycare. His death has fueled anger over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies and renewed concern about the use of force by ICE agents.

“He was a good father,” Jorge said. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said an agent opened fire in self-defense after Villegas allegedly drove his vehicle toward officers. But bodycam footage and documents reviewed by Reuters suggest a more complicated sequence of events.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have both criticized ICE’s tactics and called for a full investigation.

“I am confident justice will be done,” Jorge added. “For the way he was killed, for the way it all happened, there must be accountability.”

Blanca Avila, who went to school with Villegas, remembered him as “a humble man and a kind classmate.” She said his death has left his siblings in the U.S. living in fear.

“They go to work worried that immigration officers might come and do to them what they did to our classmate,” Avila said. “We are humble, hardworking people—just like Silverio.”