Mexico Moves Toward Legal Action Over ICE Killings, Including Franklin Park Man Shot During Chicago-Area Raid

Mexico's government is preparing to take its case against U.S. immigration enforcement to court, naming 17 deaths of Mexican nationals it says occurred in ICE custody or during immigration operations across the country, including one in the Chicago area.

President Claudia Sheinbaum's administration has said diplomacy alone will not resolve the deaths, and officials are drafting criminal complaints against the agents and officials they hold responsible. Mexico has also sent 11 diplomatic notes to the United States over the killings and plans to bring the matter to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, according to the Mexican government.

The names of the 17 people have not been made public. But ABC7's I-Team confirmed one of them is Silverio Villegas-Gonzales, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Franklin Park last September during Operation Midway Blitz, the enforcement surge that swept through the Chicago area.

According to the Department of Homeland Security's account at the time, an ICE agent targeting Villegas-Gonzales opened fire after Villegas-Gonzales refused commands and drove his car toward officers. DHS said the agent was hit and seriously injured and fired "fearing for his own life." Villegas-Gonzales died at the scene.

Body camera footage obtained by the I-Team shows the agent who fired his weapon describing his own injuries as nothing major. That account differs from DHS's initial description of the shooting as a life-threatening encounter.

The Franklin Park case has drawn new attention this week because of its resemblance to the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old builder killed by an ICE officer in Houston on Tuesday. Federal agents in unmarked vehicles pursued Salgado Araujo's white van as he drove his construction crew to a job site. DHS initially said Salgado Araujo was the target of an enforcement operation, had rammed an ICE vehicle and ignored orders to stop before an officer shot him. The department later reversed course, saying Salgado Araujo was not actually the target of the operation at all. It has not produced evidence for its version of events.

The three men riding with Salgado Araujo told a lawyer who has spoken with them that he was shot through the passenger side window, and that the officer who fired was not standing in front of the van and was not in danger. Salgado Araujo's family disputed DHS's account as well, saying he had been coached by immigration lawyers on how to behave if stopped and was close to obtaining legal status when he was killed. His son, Ronaldo Salgado, said his father knew not to sign anything and knew to call family first if agents detained him.

Four Democratic members of Congress from the Houston area, including Rep. Sylvia Garcia and Rep. Christian Menefee, said at a vigil Saturday that they would push for an independent investigation into the shooting. Garcia said federal agents were looking for a different person entirely when they tried to stop Salgado Araujo's van, citing a briefing she received from ICE's acting director.

"We are never going to forget that his blood is on Donald Trump's hands," Menefee said. "We are not at war. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was not a casualty. He was a human being who was murdered by our government."

The Houston shooting is at least the eighth death tied to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement campaign, and it has become part of the case Mexico is assembling against U.S. authorities. Officials in Sheinbaum's government have pointed to the pattern between the Houston and Franklin Park shootings as evidence that similar circumstances, an agent claiming self-defense against a vehicle, are recurring without independent verification.

In Franklin Park, Villegas-Gonzales's death last September was one of several shootings during Operation Midway Blitz, the immigration enforcement push that expanded ICE activity across Chicago's suburbs. His killing drew condemnation from local officials and immigrant advocacy groups at the time, but DHS's account of the shooting was not publicly challenged with contradicting evidence until the body camera footage surfaced.

Mexico's push for criminal complaints goes beyond the diplomatic notes and public statements the country has issued so far. It is not yet clear which U.S. jurisdiction or court would hear any complaint Mexican officials file, or whether American authorities would recognize such filings at all. Mexican officials have not set a timeline for when complaints might be submitted or named which agents or officials would be targeted.

The Department of Homeland Security has not responded publicly to Mexico's plans for legal action. ICE has not commented on the discrepancy between its account of the Villegas-Gonzales shooting and the body camera footage obtained by the I-Team. No new statement has been issued regarding the Houston shooting since DHS acknowledged Salgado Araujo was not the target of the operation that led to his death.

Salgado Araujo's relatives buried him this week in Houston. Villegas-Gonzales's case in Franklin Park remains open ten months after his death, with no independent review of the shooting yet made public.