DuPage group to build altars, hold vigil Saturday for those killed by immigration enforcement officers

The Casa DuPage Workers Center, together with community members, will honor three people killed by federal immigration officers by constructing Day of the Dead altars Saturday in Wheaton.

Members of the group said in a news release that they’ll build altars to honor Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed in January in Minneapolis, as well as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was fatally shot in September by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park.

The altars will be built from 1 to 4 p.m. at Casa DuPage, 311 S. Naperville Road in Wheaton, and then taken on the back of a pickup truck to the site in Franklin Park where Villegas-Gonzalez was killed near 25th and Grand avenues.

A candlelight vigil will be held at the site.

“We need to keep track of our humanity in this moment, as we feel to the marrow of our bones the pain that ICE has unleashed on us all by constantly remembering these martyrs,” Cristobal Cavazos, executive director of Casa DuPage Workers Center, said in a statement. “We will continue to struggle for justice, honoring their lives (and) legacy.”

Casa DuPage Workers Center is a program of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, a grassroots, community-funded, activist group whose goal is to build solidarity locally with the immigrant community.