Willian Alberto Gimenez Gonzalez was detained Sept. 12. Advocates believe he was targeted because of an ongoing lawsuit alleging he and four other workers were assaulted in 2024.
By Sophia Kalakailo
Willian Alberto Gimenez Gonzalez (center, white shirt) speaks at an Aug. 6, 2024 press conference announcing a lawsuit accusing Home Depot security personnel of battering day laborers. Gimenez Gonzalez was arrested by ICE agents in September 2025. (Provided/Raise the Floor Alliance).
Attorneys and workers’ rights advocates are fighting to free a Chicago asylum seeker detained by federal immigration agents in mid-September, saying authorities wrongfully arrested someone who was not facing deportation and has no criminal record.
Willian Alberto Gimenez Gonzalez and his wife, Mari Torrealba, took a day off from work to run errands the morning of Sept. 12, said Kevin Herrera, legal director for Raise the Floor Alliance. They were parked outside a barbershop in Little Village when two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped the couple on Cermak Road around 11 a.m., Herrera said.
Neither the couple nor the agents said much, aside from agents confirming Gimenez Gonzalez’ identity, Herrera said. Torrealba tried to film and asked what they were doing, but the agents wouldn’t interact with her. Then, without explanation, the agents handcuffed Gimenez Gonzalez and took him into custody.
For two days, neither Torrealba nor organizers advocating for Gimenez Gonzalez knew where he was. His attorneys ultimately located him at the North Lake Processing Center in western Michigan — a detention center whose reopening earlier this summer was shrouded in controversy — and are still fighting in court for his release.
Herrera and Gimenez Gonzalez’s supporters believe immigration officials targeted him for his involvement in a lawsuit filed in summer 2024 by Raise the Floor Alliance and the People’s Law Office. The Latino Union of Chicago, Gimenez Gonzalez and four other day laborers have alleged criminal trespassing enforcement escalated to illegal physical assaults by security personnel at a Southwest Side Home Depot, including multiple off-duty Chicago Police officers.
“Given the circumstances under which he was detained … this was 100% targeting. This wasn't a random sweep that they caught him at,” said Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of Latino Union of Chicago.
The group launched a fundraiser to help Torrealba with living expenses while her husband is detained. She is too afraid to work and risk further retaliation by federal officials, according to the GoFundMe.
A group of day laborers wait for contractors to enter on the Western Boulevard entrance of The Home Depot, 4555 S. Western Blvd. on April 4, 2024. (Sebastián Hidalgo/for City Bureau)
City Bureau’s Civic Reporting Fellow Sebastián Hidalgo first reported the details of the lawsuit in August 2024.
The suit alleges security guards choked, threw around, punched, slapped and otherwise struck day laborers after handcuffing them and bringing them into a security room inside the Home Depot building, located at 4555 S. Western Blvd.. The incidents took place between October 2023 and May 2024, and involved Venezuelan and Colombian migrants between 26-45 years old. Each plaintiff endured xenophobic and racial insults while detained by off-duty CPD officers and Home Depot security, the lawsuit states.
The four other migrants are asylum-seekers, like Gimenez Gonzalez, and some also had work permits.
Gimenez Gonzalez was “basically the spokesperson” for the group as they took their allegations public last summer, Alvelo Rivera said. He believes Gimenez Gonzalez taking a public stance put him further on immigration officials’ radar.
Spokespeople from the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about his arrest. In a statement to the Sun-Times, an ICE spokesperson said Gimenez Gonzalez was arrested on suspicion of being in the country without legal authorization.
The spokesperson said Gimenez Gonzalez has “a history of not showing up to court,” including failing to appear in immigration court in April 2024, where a judge ordered him removed from the country.
ICE’s statements about Gimenez Gonzalez’s legal status are inaccurate, Herrera said, adding he has not received any direct communication from federal authorities about his client. Gimenez Gonzalez has an ongoing asylum case; he does not have a pending order of removal from a judge, Herrera said.
Gimenez Gonzalez missed an April 2024 immigration court hearing due to “confusing and extraordinary circumstances,” Herrera said. The hearing took place in Memphis, Tennessee, where Gimenez Gonzalez previously lived and worked, but he had already relocated to Chicago. While the missed hearing resulted in a deportation order, a judge rescinded it after the case was transferred to Chicago, attorneys said in a recent court filing fighting Gimenez Gonzalez’s current detention.
Before he was detained, Gimenez Gonzalez was not expected to return to immigration court until July 2026, the court filings state.
There were no grounds for his arrest aside from “what the government is saying is a criminal history,” Herrera said. That includes traffic tickets and a trespassing charge in relation to the Home Depot incidents that was already dismissed, he said.
“There was no reason for him to believe that he would be the target of the government — any reason based on that immigration history,” Herrera said. “So for him to have been pulled over and asked specifically to identify himself is extremely suspect.”
Home Depot and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability launched investigations after the allegations in the 2024 lawsuit were made public. COPA’s investigation is still ongoing as of Sept. 22, a spokesperson said.
“[W]e look forward to closing it in a timely manner,” spokesperson Jennifer Rottner wrote in an email.
In April 2024, Home Depot said its internal investigation found no evidence the allegation against its security personnel happened on company property. The company enforces a non-solicitation policy, officials said at the time.
‘We're praying for him and with him’
Gimenez Gonzalez and his wife, Mari Torrealba, pose for a selfie. (Provided/Raise the Floor Alliance)
The Rev. Kenji Kuramitsu of St. Paul and the Redeemer Episcopal Church addressed his Hyde Park congregation at morning services two days after Gimenez Gonzalez was arrested. The “agents of the devil” abducted one of their own, he said, according to a recording of the service.
The church later released a statement urging ICE to release Gimenez Gonzalez, calling his detention unjust.
From helping set up for Sunday services and welcoming people to the parish, to pulling weeds and harvesting food in its garden, Gimenez Gonzalez is a very active church member, Kuramitsu told City Bureau. Learning of his arrest was devastating, he said.
“Despite the pain and challenges that he’s witnessed, he’s someone who brings a kind of stability to the parish,” Kuramitsu said. “And even across language differences, has maintained and built deep relationships with people in our congregation.”
Gimenez Gonzalez and Torrealba fled a politically turbulent Venezuela around two years ago. From August 2022 to late 2024, roughly 51,000 migrants have arrived via buses and airplanes to Chicago from Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott was sending people who crossed the border into the U.S. to Democratic-led cities. Gimenez Gonzalez was among those groups shipped to Chicago in a “cruel manner,” Kuramitsu said.
“Willian came to think of the church as what we [as priests] want people to think of the church, which is a sanctuary,” Kuramitsu said. “He stayed there for a period and has used our space to be able to get on his feet.”
Kuramitsu recounted sharing meals with Gimenez Gonzalez and described him as “humble” and having a “great sense of humor.” Just five days before he was detained, Gimenez Gonzalez pulled the reverend aside at church.
“[He] talked about how excited he was to get his work permit,” Kuramitsu said. “Just to have this document and what it could mean for the future [the couple] were trying to scramble to build here. That kind of hope and a trust, I think we can call faith.”
The congregation is “the heartbeat for Willian,” and the couple’s place in Chicago, Kuramitsu said. Gimenez Gonzalez’s seat at the church is empty during services for the first time in two years. With its values of “radical hospitality,” the Hyde Park church is grappling with how to respond in a “sustained and serious way,” he said.
“I hope he knows that we're praying for him and with him,” Kuramitsu said. “And I hope that his faith can be something that continues to sustain him.”
Kuramitsu met with Gimenez in person Sept. 28, and said the visit seemed to raise his spirits. St. Paul and the Redeemer Episcopal Church will hold a prayer vigil Oct. 7 in solidarity with immigrant communities, Kuramitsu said.
Gimenez Gonzalez and Kevin Herrera (right), legal director for Raise the Floor Alliance, speak to a reporter after the group announced their lawsuit in August 2024. (Provided/Raise the Floor Alliance).
The ongoing lawsuit
Amid Gimenez Gonzalez’s arrest, the day laborers, Herrera, and the labor rights advocates are continuing their court battle.
The attorneys have identified most, if not all, of the off-duty police who were involved, and a larger set of defendants who may have been implicated in the alleged abuse, Herrera said.
A day laborer waits for contractors to enter on the Western Boulevard entrance of Home Depot, 4555 S. Western Blvd., on April 4, 2024. (Sebastián Hidalgo/for City Bureau)
That lawsuit brings up problems that can arise with “moonlighting,” or when sworn police officers take on second jobs working security. The police department’s lack of secondary employment oversight contributed to the abuses of day laborers by off-duty police officers at the Southwest Side Home Depot store, located at 4555 S. Western Blvd., Herrera said.
“We have exchanged a great deal of information about what our clients know, but more importantly, what the City of Chicago seems to understand regarding its own policies on moonlighting,” Herrera said. “A lot has been revealed about the extent to which Chicago police were working in secondary employment.”
Read more: When Chicago cops moonlight, no one is watching | The Chicago Reporter
The other day laborers involved in the suit are worried about how ramped-up ICE raids in Chicago and the suburbs will affect their asylum cases.
Until Gimenez Gonzalez’s arrest, the group had been continuing with their day-to-day lives. The lawsuit has not impacted their ability to find work, and none of the plaintiffs had experienced retaliation before this arrest, Herrera said.
“Just like many low-wage workers, it’s steady and a constant struggle to find work,” Herrera said. “But our plaintiffs have had relatively good luck in getting steady employment.”
They’re trying their best to get connected with formal work, Alvelo Rivera added, but some of the day laborers have found themselves going back to the hiring corners.
Sophia Kalakailo is a Report for America corps member covering Chicago’s South and West sides. She focuses on holding public officials accountable to their communities, covering civic happenings, and building resources and guides with solutions related to housing, public services and other political issues. Before joining City Bureau, Sophia reported on the Ypsilanti, Michigan area for MLive.
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