Camilla Forte/Borderless Magazine/Catchlight Local/Report for AmericaFranklin Park residents say the roadside memorial to a father shot by ICE has become a gathering place for grief and resistance to immigration enforcement.
On a Thursday afternoon in August, Ingrid Alvarenga carried jugs of water to a roadside memorial in suburban Franklin Park.
Alvarenga stops at the site once or twice a week to water the tomatoes and marigolds and remember the local man who lost his life there.
Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was killed by an immigration agent on Sept. 12, 2025, after dropping his children off at school and daycare. The ICE officer fatally shot Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old Mexican immigrant, during the agency’s “Operation Midway Blitz.”
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In the year since Villegas-Gonzalez’s death, community members like Alvarenga have maintained the roadside vigil and tried to keep attention on his case. The Illinois State Police launched an investigation into Villegas-Gonzalez’s killing in May, which is still ongoing. No charges have been filed against the ICE officer who shot Villegas-Gonzalez.
Villegas-Gonzalez’s family is working with the Illinois office of the MacArthur Justice Center and the National Immigrant Justice Center to explore legal actions against the U.S. government. They are also trying to get legal custody of his two children, who are now 8 and 4 years old and living in foster care in Idaho, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Community members, meanwhile, are dealing with their grief by tending to the roadside memorial that has become a space of healing and remembrance. Last month, the Village of Franklin Park Board of Trustees approved a resolution to make the vigil permanent, adding a commemorative plaque and a bench.
“His memory should be kept alive,” said Alvarenga, a member of Hijas del Pueblo, a local grassroots organization that has helped lead this effort. “The moment they killed him, he was reborn again through all of us — through the community.”
A Permanent Space for Remembrance
On Sept. 12, 2025, two ICE agents pulled over Villegas-Gonzalez in Franklin Park during a traffic stop. One officer fatally shot him before the car he was driving crashed into a truck near Grand Avenue and Emerson Street.
In Franklin Park, the news of the killing left community members grappling with a broken sense of safety. About one-third of Franklin Park residents are immigrants and over half are Latino.
“Because we are in such a diverse community, it could be anybody,” Franklin Park resident Stephen Dawson told Borderless last October. “It could be people we know.”
In the wake of the shooting, residents created a roadside vigil just a few blocks from where Villegas-Gonzalez died. When Borderless visited the site last year, candles, flowers and posters surrounded a photo of Villegas-Gonzalez and his children. In the months since, a small garden has joined these items, and residents have continued to replace candles and wilted flowers.
Hijas del Pueblo co-founder Adriana Balvaneda told Borderless the group’s focus has been maintaining the memorial to make sure it’s “nice long enough for [Silverio’s] kids to become adults, so they can come back.”
“We are the women who remember to bring the vase with water,” Balvaneda said. “We are the women who remember that you have to come back and clear the flowers. We’re the ones who remember that you have to come and plant something for it to grow. We’re planting the seeds to something greater.”
To help protect the memorial, community members worked for four months, asking the village board to make the space permanent with a community garden, a crosswalk, a street sign, a bench and a commemorative plaque.
“We realized very quickly that we have to do a lot to organize the community and make sure that we can preserve Silverio’s memory and make sure that no one forgets what happened here,” resident Keisa Reynolds told Borderless. “Because he was murdered in Franklin Park. That is something everyone needs to know.”
Last month, their hard work paid off. At the town hall meeting on Aug. 17, the village board approved the installation of a memorial bench and commemorative plaque in Villegas-Gonzalez’s honor.
Among the Franklin Park residents who showed up at the board meeting to support the resolution were Reynolds and Gabriella Barber.
Both are organizers with Public School Strong and are frequent collaborators with Hijas del Pueblo. They met just after Villegas-Gonzalez’s killing, and bonded over their shared hope to make the community safer for their children and neighbors.
“Silverio was one of those familiar faces that we would see walking our kids to school or even at the grocery store,” Barber said. “It’s just sad. It’s so sad.”
The August board resolution calls for the village to provide a space where “residents may gather to remember Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, and to reflect on the experiences of immigrant families in the community.”
“We are a wonderfully diverse community with many shared values and beliefs,” said Board President Barrett Pederson at the town hall meeting. “Among them, that everyone deserves respect and dignity. The dedication of the bench for Silverio Gonzalez will allow for a permanent place of remembrance and reflection on the life and death of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.”
While the village board’s approved resolution did not include the crosswalk, community garden or street sign, many residents and public figures told Borderless that the results felt like a win.
“What we hope is that by having his name publicly, we can realize that he is a person before being undocumented or being called a criminal,” Leandro Fossá, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Melrose Park, told Borderless at the meeting. “He is a person that lived among us, a person that represents the face and culture of this community.”
Building Beyond the Memorial
With the fight for a permanent memorial over, Franklin Park organizers are now trying to bring people together to protect immigrant families.
“This is the first step that we are taking to turn their hate into love, into something that can grow,” said Alvarenga. “I think death goes together with life. Right now we will be celebrating his life forever, until we can’t anymore.”
While ICE arrests declined earlier this year, local organizations have noted an uptick in Chicago-area immigration arrests this summer.
“The feeling of fear is in all the community,” Hijas del Pueblo co-founder, María “Lupe” Gonzalez, told Borderless. “We hope that after a moment like this, it … will be a moment to unify us and get more powerful as a community.”
On Labor Day, Hijas del Pueblo and Public School Strong organized a family gathering in a park half a mile from Villegas-Gonzalez’s memorial.
“We are really trying to change the culture out here to recognize each other in the streets [and] to make sure that not one of us can be hurt without the rest of us finding out, because that is really what our community is about — being present for each other,” Balvaneda told Borderless.
In Little Pearl Park, some children played “Red Light, Green Light” in the grass, while parents made arts and crafts with the other kids.
For the families who came, the event was a reminder of the connections they have made in the shadow of tragedy.
“It is a way for people to realize that community is at the heart of all of this and the children are at the heart of all of this,” Reynolds said.
Tara Mobasher is Borderless Magazine’s newsletter writer and reporter. Email Tara at [email protected].
