An illegal immigrant has been arrested after allegedly dragging and striking a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with his car during an arrest attempt in Chicago Heights, Illinois — an attack that sent the officer to the hospital and brought a public rebuke from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who blamed sanctuary rhetoric for the violence and pointed to a more than 1,600% rise in assaults on immigration officers.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers spotted Jose Garnica-Naranjo, 32, a Mexican citizen living in the United States illegally, leaving a home in Chicago Heights on Tuesday morning. The officers followed his car at a distance before attempting a traffic stop, and when they approached the vehicle they ordered him to turn off the engine — an order DHS says he refused. "When officers attempted to remove him from the vehicle, Garnica accelerated and fled while an ERO Chicago officer was partially inside the vehicle through the driver-side window," DHS said in a statement. Garnica-Naranjo then drove over a raised, tree-lined center median, throwing the officer from the vehicle, and as he fled, his car struck the injured officer.
The officer was taken to a nearby hospital with contusions, cuts and scrapes to his legs. Medical tests found no broken bones, and Secretary Mullin confirmed the officer has since been released from the hospital. Garnica-Naranjo was taken into custody on Wednesday, a day after the incident. ICE says his criminal record includes prior convictions for domestic violence and assault. DHS has announced the arrest as an alleged assault on a federal officer; the department's statement did not detail the specific criminal charges, and Garnica-Naranjo — like every person arrested — is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty in court.
"This illegal alien used his vehicle to assault one of our ICE officers, hospitalizing the officer," Secretary Mullin said. "Thankfully, the officer has since been released from the hospital. This is just the latest example of the staggering rise in anti-ICE violence, with our officers facing a more than 1,600% increase in assaults against them."
Mullin placed the blame on the rhetoric of sanctuary politicians, naming Illinois' governor directly. "This is the result of anti-ICE rhetoric from sanctuary politicians like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker," he said. "DHS is calling on Governor Pritzker and all other sanctuary politicians to knock off this violent rhetoric and start cooperating with ICE before any more officers are injured in the line of duty." DHS's statement carried no response from the governor's office; Illinois' sanctuary policies, which limit how far local police can cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, have been a running fight between the state and the department.
The figure behind Mullin's warning comes from DHS's own count. The department says there were 647 assaults against ICE officers from January 20, 2025 to September 20, 2026, compared with just 37 in the comparable period under the Biden administration — an increase of 1,649%, which the department states as a rise of more than 1,600%. DHS argues that when elected officials describe ICE officers as terrorizing neighborhoods, the men and women carrying out Congress's immigration laws are the ones who pay for it on the street.
For ordinary people, this is where the immigration fight stops being a debate in Washington and lands on a residential street. Federal officers making an arrest in a suburb like Chicago Heights are somebody's neighbours, fathers and sons; a driver who allegedly turns his car into a weapon puts the officer, himself and anyone standing nearby in danger in seconds. Whether local police cooperate with ICE — and whether politicians turn the temperature down — decides how safely those arrests happen in the towns where people actually live, and it is why DHS is pressing sanctuary states to work with its officers instead of against them.
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