Man pleads guilty to gun charge tied to shots fired near immigration agents in Little Village
Published in News & Features
CHICAGO — An undocumented immigrant with a history of weapons convictions admitted Monday to firing shots “in the vicinity of” immigration agents as they ran enforcement raids in Little Village near the end of the controversial deportation operation in Chicago last fall.
The guilty plea by Hector Gomez, 46, marked the second felony conviction on federal charges stemming from Operation Midway Blitz.
Gomez, who pleaded guilty to one count of possession of a firearm by a felon, faces up to about 2 1/2 years in prison when he’s sentenced by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly in July. He also will face deportation once he’s released.
Gomez’s initial arrest took place toward the end of a chaotic morning of immigration raids in Little Village on Nov. 8, in which a Chicago police officer was hit by a car and a baby girl and her family were pepper-sprayed while trying to get groceries.
At one point, agents called Chicago police to report that someone had fired shots from a black Jeep Wrangler at one of their vehicles near 25th and Kedzie, though no one was hit, according to police.
According to police reports, officers who arrived at that intersection in response to the call didn’t get to question the Border Patrol agents further “due to a large hostile crowd that was beginning to escalate and throw bricks.”
The Ogden (10th) District commander personally located two 9mm shell casings in the 2500 block of South Kedzie Avenue, the reports stated.
Around 2:15 p.m. that day, police arrived at Aguascalientes restaurant for a 911 call of a person with a gun. People in the restaurant’s parking lot, in the 3100 block of West 26th Street, pointed them toward a black 2018 Jeep Wrangler. A man was sitting in the car with a gun in his lap, authorities said.
The man, later identified as Gomez, had allegedly approached a woman with the gun in his hand, laughing and pointing it at her, authorities said. The arrest report states that the Jeep matched the description federal agents had given a few hours earlier but doesn’t draw any other connection between Gomez and agents’ report of shots fired.
Gomez, an immigrant from Mexico without legal status and a criminal history that included two previous weapons convictions, was not charged with firing the shots at the agents. Later, however, an indictment alleged that shell casings found at that scene matched the 9mm gun in his possession when he was arrested.
Gomez first entered the U.S. in 2008 using a fake name and has since been removed from the country several times, according to the federal charges.
His attorney, Michael Monaco, declined to comment on the case pending the sentencing July 20.
Gomez was among some 32 people to face federal charges stemming from the Trump administration’s two-month deportation campaign last fall, which sparked protests across the region and near-daily clashes between residents and immigration agents on the city’s streets.
As of Monday, 20 of the defendants had been cleared, either through a grand jury refusing to indict, the dismissal of charges by prosecutors, or, in the one case that went to trial, a not guilty verdict by a jury. The U.S. attorney’s office has entered into deferred prosecution agreements with four others that are on track to end without a criminal conviction.
Charges are pending against seven others, including the four defendants left in the “Broadview Six” conspiracy case against protesters who allegedly blocked and damaged an ICE agent’s vehicle outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in September.
The only other conviction came earlier this month, when Anthony Gonzalez Alvarez pleaded guilty to a felony charge stemming from a traffic altercation with Border Patrol agents in Brighton Park in October.
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