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A Death in Chicago and Why ICE Needs Civilian Oversight
As ICE acts more and more like a specialized police force, the hard lessons America has learned about policing become impossible to ignore.
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This week, just after dropping his kids off at school, Silverio Villegas-González was killed by ICE officers in suburban Chicago. According to the Chicago Sun Times, ICE agents said they stopped the car as part of ‘targeted law enforcement activity.” The incident is described this way:
During the stop, a man allegedly resisted arrest and attempted to drive his car into officers, dragging one officer, ICE officials said.
The officer opened fire and shot the man, according to ICE. He was taken to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead, authorities said.
Well, maybe an officer was able to pull out his weapon, aim, shoot, and kill the driver of a car while simultaneously being dragged by that car. But maybe not. Local officials from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to members of Congress have called for a full investigation of the incident.
This tragedy is a bright red flare warning of disaster ahead. Because no matter what ICE investigators find, it will not be credible.
As ICE acts more and more like a specialized police force, the hard lessons America has learned about policing become impossible to ignore. Where the government uses coercive force in American communities, care must be taken to ensure transparency around accountability.
Even before the mishandled of internal investigations into the police conduct in cases like the deaths of Laquan McDonald and Breonna Taylor, many jurisdictions created civilian oversight boards. The nature of this oversight differs across jurisdictions. In general oversight includes one or more of these functions: investigative, review, audit, adjudication, appeals, supervision, and advisory. In some cases, civilian oversight boards have subpoena power.
Policing is one of the most difficult jobs in America. Armed agents of the state go into neighborhoods to protect the residents. By its very nature, policing is coercive. By our very nature, Americans are wary of coercive force. We want to be sure that it is used with restraint and in accordance with the law.
Most police officers do their jobs. But there remain far too many incidents where force is misused. The result is that innocent people are hurt. Some are killed. Others are wrongly incarcerated. Trust between the police and communities evaporates. Fewer people come forward with information about crimes. Clearance rates go down. Public safety suffers.
On top of that, when police power is abused, it is expensive. Between 2019 and 2022 Chicago taxpayers spent nearly half a billion dollars because of police misconduct cases. Just this week, the City Council moved to approve another $90 million in payouts to resolve 176 lawsuits tied to just one corrupt cop.
Civilian oversight can reduce the incidences of misconduct. It can also protect good policing even in the most fraught and difficult situations. It builds trust in the system of accountability.
Now in communities across America, ICE operates as a specialized police force. The U.S. Supreme Court has now given them extraordinary powers, including allowing them to use racial profiling techniques to identify potential detainees. Even if the great majority of ICE officers work to follow the law, everyone knows that whatever can go wrong most certainly will go wrong. This week they shot and killed Mr. Villegas-Gonzalez.
That case should spur the government to create a civilian oversight process to gives Americans some confidence that ICE agents can be held accountable. Anything less creates additional mistrust, makes the ICE job more difficult, and ensures that the public will increasingly lose confidence in ICE as more tragedies like this one occur.
Edwin Eisendrath hosts “It’s the Democracy, Stupid” on Lincoln Square and "The Big Picture" on WCPT820 AM/ Heartland Signal. He's the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools. You can follow him on BlueSky at eisendrath.net and Substack at “It’s the Democracy, Stupid.” Read the original column here.
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