Sheridan Gorman’s family slams Chicago Mayor and Illinois governor over student’s killing
The suspect, an undocumented migrant from Venezuela, was hiding behind a lighthouse when he came out and shot at the group 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman was with.
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A Deadly Reckoning: How Sanctuary Policies Undermine Justice and Endanger American Lives
The city of Chicago, bathed in the blue glow of its iconic skyline, has long been a stage for progressive political theater. For years, its leaders have wrapped themselves in the banner of “sanctuary,” proclaiming their jurisdictions to be havens for those who flout federal immigration law. Yet, the tragic and violent death of 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman has torn away the abstract rhetoric to reveal a stark, gruesome reality. As her grieving family now levels its fury at Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, we are forced to confront the consequences of policies that prioritize political ideology over the safety of American citizens.
According to reports, Sheridan was with a group when a suspect, identified as an undocumented migrant from Venezuela, emerged from behind a lighthouse and opened fire. In an instant, a young life full of promise was extinguished. The suspect, who had no legal right to be in this country, was roaming the streets of an American city. The question demanding an answer is simple: How did this happen? The answer, though uncomfortable for the progressive establishment, is equally simple: sanctuary policies.
Sanctuary cities and states are not merely passive refuges; they are active impediments to the rule of law. By deliberately refusing to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), these jurisdictions create a magnet for illegal immigration. They declare to the world that within their borders, the federal statutes governing who may enter and reside in the United States will not be enforced. This is not compassion; it is a dereliction of the most fundamental duty of government: to protect the people within its jurisdiction.
The danger posed by these policies is not abstract. When local law enforcement is prohibited from communicating with federal immigration authorities, dangerous individuals who should be deported are instead released back into the community. We are not speaking of families seeking a better life in the abstract; we are speaking of individuals who have already demonstrated a willingness to commit violent acts. In the case of Sheridan Gorman’s alleged killer, an undocumented migrant was present in Chicago because the city’s leadership built a wall of bureaucratic resistance against federal immigration enforcement.
When Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker double down on the Illinois Trust Act and similar measures, they are not merely making a political statement. They are actively obstructing the ability of federal agencies to remove public safety threats. The logic is perverse: a violent illegal alien is shielded from deportation because local police are handcuffed by policies designed to prevent “fear” in the undocumented community. What about the fear of a mother burying her 18-year-old daughter? What about the fear of citizens who wonder if the next person hiding behind a public landmark is there to sightsee or to ambush?
The consequences extend beyond the immediate horror of violent crime. The drain on public funds in sanctuary jurisdictions is a secondary crisis that exacerbates the primary one. States like Illinois and cities like Chicago are already teetering on the brink of fiscal insolvency. Yet, they continue to invite a humanitarian and logistical crisis that strains resources to the breaking point.
Taxpayer dollars that should be used to repair crumbling infrastructure, bolster understaffed police departments, and improve struggling public schools are instead diverted to provide shelter, healthcare, legal aid, and education to a massive influx of illegal immigrants. This is not an issue of xenophobia; it is an issue of math. The welfare state, already bloated, becomes unsustainable when millions of individuals who did not go through the legal immigration process are granted access to services funded by American taxpayers.
We see this acutely in Chicago, where the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on migrant shelters and services—funds that were not budgeted for and that critics argue are being siphoned from long-neglected South and West Side neighborhoods where American citizens, many of them minorities, live in poverty. The progressive hypocrisy is staggering: the same leaders who champion sanctuary policies preside over communities where crime rates are high and city services are failing the citizens who live there. They would rather spend political capital protecting illegal aliens from deportation than protecting their own constituents from being victimized.
Furthermore, the illegality of sanctuary states cannot be overstated. The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution establishes that federal law is supreme over state law. By intentionally obstructing federal immigration enforcement, states like Illinois are engaging in a form of nullification—a concept settled by the Civil War. When governors and mayors refuse to honor ICE detainers, they are not exercising “local control”; they are actively violating the principle of federal law enforcement.
The Biden administration, which shares the ideological bent of the Illinois governor, has done nothing to enforce federal supremacy. Instead, they have facilitated the crisis by ending remain-in-Mexico policies, halting border wall construction, and releasing hundreds of thousands of migrants into the interior. The result is that violent criminals who have no right to be here are filtered into cities where local leaders have promised to shield them from accountability.
Sheridan Gorman’s family is right to be furious. They are the victims of a political experiment that has failed. While the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois hold press conferences virtue-signaling about their “welcoming” cities, American families are burying their children. The suspect in this case should never have been in a position to hide behind a lighthouse with a firearm. He should have been detained at the border, processed, and, given the nature of his eventual alleged crimes, deported long before he had the chance to take an American life.
It is time to call this what it is: a dereliction of duty. Sanctuary policies do not make communities safer; they make them more dangerous. They do not save taxpayer money; they squander it on a crisis of their own making. They do not uphold American values; they undermine the rule of law that makes ordered liberty possible.
If there is to be justice for Sheridan Gorman, it must begin with an honest reckoning. We must dismantle the sanctuary structures that gave her alleged killer a foothold in this country. We must demand that federal law be enforced uniformly, without regard to the political whims of local mayors. And we must insist that the safety of American citizens not the comfort of illegal immigrants who have broken our laws be the paramount concern of our government. Until then, we will continue to see headlines like this one: a promising young life cut short, and a family left to mourn in the shadow of a political agenda that valued sanctuary over safety.
#KateSteinle