Fatal DUI Driver Arrested by ICE

The guilty plea and the 18-year sentence were the judgment for Gregory Homola's death, and parole did not undo it. The immigration arrest is detention under a removal order from 2010, not a new case about the crash. Whether the Nov. 2 parole was early has to be read against that 2012 judgment, which required at least 85 percent of the term before good-time credit.

Vicente Torres-Vasquez pleaded guilty in 2012 to aggravated driving under the influence resulting in death and to two counts of aggravated driving under the influence resulting in great bodily harm. That September, a Lake County judge sentenced him to 18 years, 11 for the death and 7 for the injuries, served one after the other. He had to serve at least 85 percent before good-time credit. He was given credit for a little more than a year already served, and the judge added two years of probation after the prison term.

On July 24, 2011, he drove a Ford Explorer out of a parking lot on Route 176 in Wauconda and into the path of a motorcycle ridden by Gregory Errol Homola, 55, a Marine Corps veteran from Lake Geneva. The Explorer then hit a car in the oncoming lanes. Two women were hurt. One was pregnant. By the sentencing, she and her child had recovered, and the other woman still had trouble speaking and was in therapy. His blood-alcohol level was 0.28 percent. It was his fourth DUI, after two convictions in 2007 and one in 2008.

DHS says Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill paroled him on Nov. 2, 2026, about four years before the release date the department describes, and that the prison did not honor a detainer ICE first lodged on Jan. 16, 2017, at Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton and lodged again after a March 3 transfer to Stateville. ICE arrested him on Nov. 11. He is being held pending removal. He is a Mexican national with a final removal order from Nov. 11, 2010, after two voluntary departures through Arizona in March 2004 and a later return.