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Sheridan Gorman was just 18 years old. A freshman at Loyola University in Chicago, she hailed from Westchester County, New York. She posted on social media that she was looking forward to the warmer weather arriving in the city she planned to call home for the next four years. Her friends adored her. Her family loved her deeply. “She was full of life, full of kindness, and full of a love that she gave freely to everyone around her,” they wrote in a statement, adding, “she made people feel seen. She made people feel valued.”
Her grief-stricken loved ones issued that statement after she was shot to death along Chicago’s lakefront while out walking with friends. According to reports, an assailant clad in black clothing and a black mask approached the terrified young woman, who tried to flee. Witnesses say the man pulled out a gun, aimed, and shot her in the back as she ran away. She was pronounced dead at the scene. A promising life, full of possibilities, was snuffed out in a single, senseless spasm of violence.
A Chicago Tribune headline described the man arrested in connection with the vicious, cold-blooded murder as a “Rogers Park man,” referencing the neighborhood on the city’s north side where Loyola is located. But the individual is a “Rogers Park man” only in the same sense that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a “Maryland man.” He is, according to the Department of Homeland Security, a criminal illegal immigrant.
Jose Medina-Medina entered the United States illegally on May 9, 2023. He was captured by Border Patrol, then promptly released under the Biden administration’s open border policies, like millions of others. Within weeks, he had made his way to the Windy City. We know this because on June 19 of that year, he was arrested by local police for shoplifting. He was, of course, released, as are countless criminals who offend in jurisdictions dominated by “equity” and “justice”-preaching political leaders.
Medina also benefited from Chicago’s “sanctuary” policies, which guaranteed that local police could not cooperate with federal law enforcement after his previous arrest. He was actively protected by this policy, evidently deriving a lesson of impunity from his encounters with American authorities. He was allowed to break federal immigration law without consequence then was allowed to break additional laws without consequence.
Within a few years, officials now say, he murdered a young American woman for no apparent reason. Chicago’s city council resoundingly rejected a proposal to alter its sanctuary policy last year, which would have allowed the city’s police force to work with federal immigration agents in certain circumstances. At the behest of leftist Mayor Brandon Johnson, the measure was defeated 39-11. The full sanctuary posture was maintained. The media cheered with headlines blaring that Democrats had refused to “scale back protections for undocumented immigrants.”
Criminal illegal immigrants such as Medina were protected and emboldened. And now another innocent person is dead.
One might also wonder how this criminal illegal immigrant managed to get his hands on a gun. Chicago, after all, has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country. But such laws, which erode the rights of the law-abiding, very often fail to stop dangerous people from obtaining firearms.
For wider context, it’s also worth highlighting that Illinois recently adopted the pro-criminal SAFE-T Act under the stewardship of presidential aspirant Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL). The law effectively eliminated cash bail statewide, loosened mandatory minimum sentences, and imposed policies that critics assailed as hostile to law enforcement.
For what it’s worth, the Democrat who signed it famously filmed a video along the shores of Lake Michigan last summer, mocking the notion that the city was unsafe, digging at President Donald Trump’s policies. “I don’t know who in Washington thinks that Chicago is some sort of hellhole,” he taunted. Pritzker was not present for Gorman’s grisly killing along the same lakefront.
Some of the local reaction to Gorman’s heart-wrenching and avoidable death has featured some version of the cliche that the victim was merely in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” What are you going to do?
Her family is pointedly pushing back against trivializing this vile crime in such a manner (emphasis mine):
“What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to the idea of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is not an abstraction. This is the loss of a daughter. The loss of a sister. The loss of a future filled with milestones that will now never come. Our family is forever changed. … She was just beginning her journey, with so much ahead of her. She was doing something entirely normal — walking with friends, close to home, in an area where she had every reason to feel safe. There was nothing unusual about her being there. There was nothing that should have placed her in harm’s way. This was not inevitable. This was a choice. And our daughter paid the price for it. ... She lived her life the way any young person should be able to live it — freely, safely, and without fear. That was taken from her. And it was taken from us. Our daughter’s life was not expendable. She should still be here.”
Some will say that the “system failed” this poor girl and those who loved her. But that’s not quite right. Politicians failed Gorman. Her alleged killer was affirmatively released into the country by politicians who opposed even minimum, sensible border enforcement. Her alleged killer was affirmatively released after committing a subsequent crime. Her alleged killer was affirmatively shielded from accountability or deportation under a “sanctuary” law.
The system, implemented and administered by “progressive” Democrats, didn’t “fail.” It worked exactly as designed. And Gorman paid the ultimate price because of that sickening reality, joining the growing ranks of innocent Americans victimized by violent criminals with no legal right to be in this country at all.
The Gorman family now joins the expanding list of “angel families,” who are so often ignored by the politicians and journalists whose partisan agenda enables these outrageous atrocities.
Finally, something else must be said: Congressional Democrats, who recently voted en masse against fast-tracking deportations for noncitizens convicted of crimes such as fraud or harming law enforcement service animals, have deliberately kept the Department of Homeland Security shut down for more than a month. They’ve repeatedly refused to reopen it, despite interminable TSA lines at major airports, and despite four separate Islamic terrorist attacks hitting our homeland during their shutdown.
What is the point of this destructive intransigence? They openly admit their goal is to defund and cripple the work of the federal agency tasked with detaining and removing monsters such as Jose Medina-Medina. This is the Democratic Party’s No. 1 policy and partisan priority.
