Statement on the killing of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE and Trump’s attacks on Black and Brown communities from the UWF Executive Committee (9/13/2025) :
We mourn the loss of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was killed in Franklin Park by an ICE agent yesterday during a vehicle stop. Our hearts are with his family, his loved ones, and all of Chicagoland’s immigrant communities who face escalated threats from the Trump administration’s campaign of racist violence. Alleged traffic violations should never be a death sentence, yet we have seen this despicable racist pattern claim the lives of Dexter Reed, Daunte Wright, and so many others who would be with us today if not for reckless escalation by law enforcement against Black and Brown people. We demand justice. We demand the end of ICE operations and the end of federal troops occupying our nation’s cities.
While Chicago’s organizing may have thwarted the Trump administration’s plans to deploy troops here for now, the shifting of Trump’s attention to yet another Black-led city, Memphis, lays bare his desire to terrorize and occupy both Black and Brown communities. Here in the Chicagoland area, the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Midway Blitz” is a license to racially profile, break up families and communities, and brutalize those who refuse to sit idly by while their neighbors are under attack. Yesterday, ICE agents disappeared an outspoken community leader, Willian Gimenez, when he went to the barbershop. Yesterday, ICE agents in full riot gear fired pepper spray on peaceful protestors outside the Broadview ICE facility.
DHS’s actions have never been about safety. They have been laser-focused on harming and scapegoating our immigrant communities, creating a pre-text for occupying Black and Brown communities at large, crushing dissent, and shifting public money that should be used for healthcare, education, housing and food into systems of cruelty and punishment that disappear our neighbors and terrorize our communities.
Chicagoland is being targeted because our people know an illusion when they see one. We know safety doesn’t come in the form of family separations, violations of our civil rights, disappearing Black and Brown community members, or authoritarian grandstanding. The safest neighborhoods don’t have more law enforcement and they don’t have occupying forces, they have investment and resources. A safe society is one which provides healthcare, housing, education, clean air and water, and childcare–where these are fundamental rights instead of opportunities to profit. We continue fighting for a future where Black, Brown, and immigrant communities can rest in the certainty that their dignity and wellbeing are absolutely guaranteed.
Justice for Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez. Free Willian Gimenez. ICE and Federal Troops out of everywhere.