CHICAGO — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have arrested Vicente Torres-Vasquez, a Mexican national who served a 25-year Illinois prison sentence for a fatal drunk-driving crash, nine days after the Stateville Correctional Center released him on parole without notifying ICE, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday, November 13. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Chicago arrested him at large on November 11, and he remains in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Rockford News First independently reported the same arrest on Friday, confirming from the DHS announcement that Torres-Vasquez was picked up by ICE after his prison release, that he was released on parole from Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, on November 2 without ICE being notified, and that he was arrested by ICE officers on November 11 and is being held pending removal proceedings.
Source: Rockford News First
The 2011 crash that killed a Marine veteran
According to DHS, Torres-Vasquez was arrested in Wauconda, Illinois, after causing a fatal crash on July 24, 2011, while driving under the influence. His victim was 55-year-old Gregory Errol Homola, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, who was riding his motorcycle when he was struck by Torres-Vasquez. Two other women in another vehicle were also injured in the crash.
Torres-Vasquez was convicted in 2012 of aggravated driving under the influence resulting in the death of another person, and of two counts of aggravated driving under the influence resulting in great bodily injury. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. DHS says he had previously been arrested four times for driving under the influence, and was convicted on three of those four counts — a record that predates the fatal 2011 crash.
Two detainers, then a release without notice — DHS's account
DHS laid out the detainer timeline in detail. On January 16, 2017, ICE lodged a detainer with the Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton, Illinois. On March 3, 2026, that facility transferred Torres-Vasquez to the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, in anticipation of his parole release date, and ICE lodged another detainer there. But on November 2, 2026, according to DHS, Stateville refused to honour the ICE detainer and released him on parole without notifying ICE. It took ICE nine days to locate and arrest him at large.
"This illegal alien was sentenced to 25 years in prison after killing a man while drunk behind the wheel. When ICE lodged a detainer ahead of his release on parole, sanctuary politicians in J.B. Pritzker's Illinois refused to cooperate with us and released him without notifying ICE," Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in the DHS statement — the agency's own characterisation of the state's decision, presented here as DHS's position. "Thankfully, the brave patriots of ICE managed to arrest this killer anyway, and he will now be deported from our country."
His immigration history, according to DHS
DHS says Torres-Vasquez entered the United States without authorisation through Arizona twice in March 2004 and was granted voluntary departure both times. He then entered the country a third time at an unknown date and location, according to the agency. An immigration judge issued him a final order of removal on November 11, 2010 — months before the fatal July 2011 crash — and that order remains the basis on which ICE says he will now be removed.
The case lands in the middle of Illinois's long-running dispute over cooperation between state facilities and federal immigration enforcement. In its statement, DHS blamed what it called sanctuary policies under Governor J.B. Pritzker for the November 2 release, and listed a series of other recent Illinois cases in which it says detainers were not honoured. Those characterisations are DHS's; the department's statement is the primary source for the facts of this arrest, and the state has not issued a separate account of the Stateville release in the reporting available on Friday.
What happens next
Torres-Vasquez will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings, DHS and Rockford News First both reported. Because a final order of removal has been in place since November 11, 2010, the agency's stated intention is deportation to Mexico. For Punjabi and other immigrant readers in Illinois — including families in the Chicago suburbs and trucking communities along the I-55 and I-80 corridors near Crest Hill and Joliet — the case is a concrete example of how a state parole release and a federal detainer can collide, and of why the detainer dispute between Illinois and Washington continues to produce arrests days after a release, rather than transfers at the prison gate.