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Mexico seeks accountability in Chicago-area ICE death and 16 others. Can it force the U.S. to act? 10%
By Alma Campos7%
7/22/2026, 1:43:01 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Framing Effect, and Confirmation Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 14.6% saturation with 201 hits. Analysis detected 1,219 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,378 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 26.7% and a BS Rank of 10% (19,184 of 21,198 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 90.50% of the article peer group.
Mexico’s government has begun taking legal action to seek accountability for the deaths of 17 of its citizens during U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations — 14 of them in ICE custody, and three during other “arrest operations.”
They include Silverio Villegas González, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a traffic stop in suburban Franklin Park nearly a year ago.
Villegas González had lived in the United States since 2007.
He was the father of two young children.
At the time of his death, the Department of Homeland Security said Villegas González had fled a traffic stop and dragged an ICE agent “a significant distance with his car,” seriously injuring the agent.
But Franklin Park police body-camera video footage obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times cast doubt on the DHS description of what happened, catching the ICE agent saying his injuries were "nothing major," a "knee injury" and "some lacerations" to his hands.
Mexico’s announcement came days after another ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston on July 7.
DHS said Salgado Araujo was not the person agents were looking for.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has referred to these deaths as “homicides.”
As she called for more accountability at a news conference announcing steps her government was taking, Sheinbaum said Mexico “cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died.”
“We are going to do everything within our power,” Sheinbaum said.
“What we cannot do is stand by as Mexicans die in ICE operations or detention.”
Mexico’s effort has three tracks.
Mexico officials have filed criminal complaints with state prosecutors in Illinois and elsewhere, and it plans to submit a complaint to the U.S.
Department of Justice, seeking independent investigations into the deaths.
The Mexican government also issued cease-and-desist letters directing U.S. detention centers to preserve records and called for a formal review by the United Nations Human Rights Council.
It will be up to U.S. officials to decide whether to investigate or file charges.
Legal experts and immigration advocates say it’s unclear whether U.S. authorities will cooperate with an investigation but that the process still could put political pressure on the United States to take action and potentially produce evidence that could be used in civil lawsuits.
Ilan Katz, a criminal defense lawyer in Mexico
Can Mexico force the U.S. to investigate?
Mexico can’t compel the United States to investigate or collect evidence, experts say.
Mexico already is encountering resistance from U.S. officials.
Earlier this week, Mexico said the State Department returned a cease-and-desist letter it sent regarding four Mexican citizens who died earlier this year at the Adelanto detention center in San Bernardino County.
For any sort of investigation into individual deaths, U.S. prosecutors have the freedom to decline to open an investigation or later decide not to file charges in any of these cases, said Ilan Katz, a Mexico-based criminal defense lawyer who is president of the Mexican Bar Foundation.
“When a government goes to the Department of Justice, it is like any person going to the DOJ," Katz said. "The department has the discretion to act or not act, but it has now been informed of alleged criminal conduct."
He said he can’t predict what will happen this time.
“We don’t know, especially because, in the world of Trump, [the] DOJ has become — or at least seems to have become — less independent than it was in the past,” Katz said.
Tom Ginsburg, a University of Chicago law professor who focuses on constitutional and international law, said even though the Mexican government can’t force the United States to investigate, it can send an important political message to Mexican citizens that their government “is not abandoning them.”
But he said international law can do little to force the United States to take accountability, and the country has often resisted complying.
“I know no one’s holding their breath with the Trump administration,” he said.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called for more accountablity for the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals who dies in ICE custody or during other ICE operations.
AP Photo/Marco Ugarte
Villegas González’s case shows what those limits mean for a family and a community.
Reyna Torres Mendívil, Mexico’s consul general in Chicago, said Mexico first called for an investigation by the FBI on Sept. 13, 2025, a day after Villegas González died.
It also sent a diplomatic request to the U.S.
Embassy in Mexico.
Torres Mendívil said Mexican officials have gotten little information, and ICE has told the consulate that its administrative review of Villegas González’s death remains ongoing.
A spokesperson for DHS said the “criminal prosecution of the involved ICE officer was declined by the U.S. attorney's office,” but “the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility is continuing its administrative review of the incident.“
In May, the Illinois State Police said it had opened an investigation into the death of Villegas González.
No results have been made public.
Torres Mendívil says attorneys representing the Villegas family are conducting their own inquiry as they consider possible legal action.
“They are carrying out a parallel investigation into the circumstances and everything that happened, for whatever legal action may be appropriate,” Torres Mendívil said.
The consulate cannot represent families directly in U.S. courts, but Torres Mendívil said it can provide money for outside lawyers on a case-by-case basis.
“We do provide resources so that attorneys can do it,” she said.
“Not in every case.
The case has to be viable.”
In Villegas González’s case, she said the consulate is “assisting the family with the payment of the attorneys” working to reunify his children with relatives.
Building a record and pressure
Mexico also has made a formal request to the United Nations to gather information about the deaths, including that of Villegas González, and examine whether the United States met its duties under international law.
The U.N. could ask U.S. officials what happened, review whether the deaths were properly investigated and call for more information, further investigation or changes in U.S. practices.
Sarah Dávila, an associate professor of law at University of Illinois Chicago, said the United States has a duty under international human rights law to investigate reports of abuse.
But the U.N.
Human Rights Council cannot force U.S. agencies to comply.
“While recommendations from the U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights are not binding, or findings from United Nations procedures, they carry enormous weight,” Dávila said.
She said those findings could create an independent record and later be used in U.S. civil or criminal cases.
The cease-and-desist letters do not carry legal force on their own but serve as a formal “warning” not to destroy or alter evidence and can become important if a case later goes to trial, experts say.
Ginsburg said Mexico could also make a case before the U.N. that the rights of its citizens were violated under international law.
That could include violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which requires the agency detaining a foreign national to allow the detainee to have access to their consular officials, who could visit them in detention and help them obtain a lawyer.
According to Shaw Drake, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law, Mexico could have another source of leverage: The United States relies heavily on Mexico to accept deportees, including people from countries other than Mexico.
“If Mexico refuses to receive those third-country nationals [for deportation], it puts a major wrench in the administration’s current mass deportation efforts,” Drake said.
This could give Mexico’s demands for accountability greater political weight, he said, if the country chooses to use it.
Artemio Arreola, political director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said even though he thinks Mexico’s legal pursuits are mainly political and diplomatic, investigations are still important because families deserve to know exactly how their relatives died, particularly when evidence has contradicted official accounts.
“These investigations are even more important because, in many of these cases, the official accounts have turned out to be false,” he said.
“Authorities have put forward narratives that later evidence has contradicted.
We have to know exactly how these deaths occurred.”
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