Trump’s Immigration Nightmare: It Is Happening Here

Donald Trump’s assault on the city of Chicago began in September, and it claimed its first casualty quickly. As Reuters would later report , on September 12, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez dropped his kids off at their school in the suburb of Franklin Park on his way to his job at a diner on the northwest side. Villegas-Gonzalez had come to the United States in 2007 to flee the violence in his home state of Michoacán, Mexico-violence wrought by the Mexican government’s militarization of its drug war, a policy encouraged and funded by the United States. (In November, the mayor of the city of Uruapan was assassinated after calling for a crackdown on organized crime.) A person was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents in November during “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” an immigration enforcement surge across the Charlotte, North Carolina, region.Ryan Murphy/Getty Images (x2)undefined A child clung to her father as ICE agents and federal officers detained him in Manhattan in July 2025.CAROL GUZY/ZUMA PRESS WIRE A Department of Homeland Security tweet from December.X SCREENGRAB FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY In Chelsea, Massachusetts, federal agents detained a woman in September as her son watched.BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS A sequence from a Ring camera captured federal agents planting an explosive device at the front door of a Los Angeles home in June.Youtube Screenshots Courtesy of NBCLA (x4) A man was detained after a Customs and Border Protection raid on a Los Angeles store in June.ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP/GETTY Described by friends and co-workers as kind and soft-spoken, Villegas-Gonzalez had two sons and met a woman from his hometown as he worked long hours in kitchens around the city. After he dropped off his sons on the morning of September 12, two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers approached the 38-year-old in his car. He put the vehicle in reverse and attempted to flee. One officer continued to chase him on foot and eventually fired his weapon, striking Villegas-Gonzalez, who crashed into a delivery truck and was pronounced dead an hour later. Officials of the Department of Homeland Security would later say that Villegas-Gonzalez “drove his car at law enforcement officers,” a claim clearly refuted by surveillance video. DHS also claimed the officer who killed Villegas-Gonzalez had been struck and dragged by the car and feared for his life. That allegation is more difficult to confirm or refute-the officer is obscured by the car in the video. The officer was later treated for “minor” injuries. Villegas-Gonzalez had no criminal record. Over eight years, he had only a series of traffic citations for offenses like a broken taillight and driving without insurance. His most serious citation was for driving 30 miles per hour over the speed limit. In its press release laying out the ICE agents’ version of events, DHS referred to him as “a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving.” The release included the striking line, “The illegal alien was pronounced dead.” In the weeks that followed, immigration agents continued to arrest parents and nannies as...

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