[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 153 (Thursday, September 18, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H4414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ICE AND DHS LOST CREDIBILITY

  (Mr. Garcia of Illinois was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Mr. GARCIA of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, as we begin Hispanic Heritage 
Month, I want to honor the millions of Latinos and Latinas who make 
this country strong. We celebrate our culture and sacrifices.
  This year, it comes with urgency because we are under attack. Last 
week, the Department of Homeland Security attacked me on X, insisting 
they deport only criminals. If you walk the streets of my district, Mr. 
Speaker, you see the truth, and it looks nothing like their tweets.
  Last Friday, in Franklin Park, a suburb in my district, Silverio 
Villegas-Gonzalez left his home like any other day. He was a restaurant 
worker, and he enjoyed cooking. He was a devoted father. He never came 
home. ICE agents stopped him, and within minutes of dropping his kids 
off at school, he was shot and killed in broad daylight that morning.
  First, they said that he drove at officers. Videos show otherwise. 
Then, they said that he dragged an officer. We have yet to see the 
evidence. They said that the officer feared for his life, but 
neighbors' videos capture gunshots and then a car coasting. Silverio 
was already incapacitated before crashing into a semitrailer.
  Those same videos show officers, including the one supposedly 
seriously injured, smashing the window, dragging Silverio's lifeless 
body out, slamming him onto the pavement, and handcuffing him as he 
bled out.
  Silverio didn't make it. DHS' story doesn't add up.
  A man is dead. A family is shattered, and the agency responsible 
keeps hiding behind masked thugs and unmarked cars. I use that term 
because that is how so many agents are acting, either voluntarily or 
not.
  ICE and DHS have no credibility, and neither do their stories. They 
have lost it.

                              {time}  1010

  Reports indicate that officers involved were not wearing body 
cameras. This is not law enforcement. This is becoming an American 
gestapo.
  Silverio's tragedy is not alone. It affects families every day now. 
That same day, in Little Village, ICE arrested William Gimenez, a day 
laborer, as he walked into a barber shop with his wife. William was a 
lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Home Depot and local police for 
abuse. ICE retaliated.
  We all saw the Cicero case: children were left crying on the side of 
an industrial road after the parents were taken away by ICE. That is 
state-sanctioned cruelty against children, the President's specialty.
  DHS insists they target criminal immigrants, yet in Elgin, in the 
dead of night, ICE staged a reckless raid with helicopters and armored 
trucks parading detainees for cameras. Secretary Noem showed up for 5 
seconds of fame and rushed to declare: Mission accomplished.
  The reality is two U.S. citizens were detained. They were not 
criminals; not even immigrants.
  To quote the President: They don't know what they are doing.
  What we see are workers punished, children traumatized, U.S. citizens 
abducted in their sleep, and a father, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, shot 
dead. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases like this.
  We celebrate Hispanic heritage, but we also issue a warning. Today it 
is Latinos and other immigrants under attack. Tomorrow it will be 
others. Once institutions are built to target and control, they don't 
surrender power, they expand it.
  Like the military-industrial complex, they find new enemies and new 
missions, new excuses to keep the money flowing and the machinery of 
fear alive.
  That is why we will not look away. This is bigger than one community 
and bigger than one city. It is about the kind of country we are 
becoming.
  Chicago will not be intimidated, and I will not stop demanding truth 
and dignity for Silverio, William, or the children in Cicero, and for 
every family who deserves to live free from state terror.

                          ____________________