An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer was seriously injured in a Chicago suburb Friday, when a suspect attempting to flee a traffic stop drove his car into ICE agents, striking him and dragging him “a considerable distance.”
“He refused to follow law enforcements commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers. One of the ICE officers was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance. Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon,” a statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.
The target of the enforcement operation, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, was declared dead Friday at an area hospital. Villegas-Gonzalez was “a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving,” DHS said, adding that he had “entered the country at an unknown date and time.”
The officer was taken to an area hospital with “severe injuries” and his condition has stabilized, according to the statement.
“We are praying for the speedy recovery of our law enforcement officer. He followed his training, used appropriate force, and properly enforced the law to protect the public and law enforcement,” a DHS spokesperson said.
ICE officers had been conducting “targeted law enforcement activity” in Franklin Park when they stopped the vehicle, the statement said.
The Department of Homeland security has been conducting “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ICE-led operation in Chicago, to remove “dangerous public safety threats from American communities.”
Chicago is “a sanctuary city that attracts and protects criminal illegal aliens to the detriment of law-abiding citizens,” ICE said in a statement posted to X, Monday.
The agency announced Thursday that at least 13 people with violent criminal records have been arrested thus far in the Chicago crackdown.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) accused President Trump of being racist for cracking down on illegal alien criminals during a recent interview with NPR, which aired on Wednesday.
Pritzker told NPR’s Steve Inskeep that the President has conflated immigration and crime “clearly for racist ends,” saying Trump “wants people to think that every person that’s here that’s not born in the United States is a criminal.”
For the past week, leftists have been holding street demonstrations and protests outside of ICE facilities in the Chicago area, including a sit-in early Friday morning outside the Broadview ICE facility that resulted in tense clashes with federal agents.
ICE law enforcement has seen a 1000 percent increase in assaults against them as they carry out enforcement operations, according to the DHS statement.
Last month, a left-wing agitator threw rocks at and set fire to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office building in Yakima, Washington, in what authorities described as a continuation of a dangerous trend of anti-ICE violence.
On July 15, an ICE officer in Dallas, Texas, sustained serious injuries after being dragged behind an illegal alien’s vehicle for more than a block.
On the 4th of July, heavily armed antifa agitators from the Dallas-Fort Worth ambushed an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, setting off fireworks to lure police to the scene and shooting a responding officer in the neck.
On July 7, a gunman armed with tactical gear and a rifle opened fire upon Border Patrol agents at the entrance of a Border Patrol annex facility in McAllen, Texas, injuring two police officers and a Border Patrol employee.
And in June, federal agents had to be deployed to quash a violent antifa uprising against an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon.