Police body camera footage released on Tuesday shows a federal immigration agent who fatally shot a Mexican immigrant describing his own injuries during a vehicle pursuit as “nothing major”, a contrast from the Trump administration’s characterization of events in suburban Chicago earlier this month.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said the officer was “seriously injured” by Silverio Villegas González, who allegedly tried to evade arrest after agents pulled over his car in Franklin Park. Nearly three hours of video and audio clips obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request shed new light on the shooting that has escalated tensions amid a federal immigration crackdown in the country’s third-largest city.
DHS said Villegas González drove his car at officers, dragging one of them “a significant distance”, leaving the officer to “fear for his life”. The officer then opened fire. Federal officials have said their officers weren’t wearing body cameras at the time.
Franklin Park police footage shows local officers arriving at the roadside where a car had crashed into a cargo truck in Franklin Park, about 18 miles (29km) west of Chicago.
Two 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 says.
“I got dragged a little bit,” said the injured agent, who can be seen walking and talking while wearing ripped jeans with blood on them.
The videos show the first agent saying his partner had suffered “a left knee injury and some lacerations to his hands” while speaking over a radio.
“Nothing major”, the injured officer says while putting his arms up to shrug off concerns.
Immigrant rights advocates, Illinois’ top elected officials and Mexico’s president have called for a thorough investigation and more transparency after the shooting that put area schools on lockdown and prompted protests.
“We want answers to questions that we have raised,” said Jesús “Chuy” García, a Democratic US representative in Chicago, on Tuesday. “The family is entitled to it. The community wants to know what is going on, and the public deserves answers as well.”
Federal officials had previously said the agent suffered “multiple” and “serious injuries”. DHS, which has not identified either agent, said the injured officer who fired his weapon has been a member of Ice since 2021 and served in the military. DHS said it was the officer’s first time firing his weapon in a “use of force incident”.
“His life was put at risk and he sustained serious injuries,” posted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who visited Chicago for an immigration operation last week, on Twitter/X last week. Marcos Charles, the acting head of Ice’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, told the AP 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 on Tuesday.
The videos, from the perspective of multiple officers arriving on the scene, also show the two Ice agents performing chest compressions on an unresponsive man lying on the ground before other emergency personnel take over. Blood can be seen on the pavement.
Ice operations in Chicago, where federal officials have arrested more than 550 people, 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 daycare the morning of the shooting in the close-knit and largely Hispanic suburb of roughly 18,000 people. DHS said he had a history of reckless driving and did not have legal permission to live in the US.
The daycare’s director described him as a good father while many Franklin Park residents came to