Sheridan Gorman’s killing puts Chicago back at the center of America's bitter fight over immigration

Months after President Donald Trump ended a pummeling deportation blitz in Chicago, the city and its “sanctuary” policies have been thrust back into the national spotlight following the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old college student.

As loved ones and fellow Loyola University Chicago students mourn freshman Sheridan Gorman, her death has become a rallying cry for politicians demanding stricter immigration enforcement. The alleged gunman, Jose G. Medina, is a Venezuelan immigrant.

Trump said Gorman’s killing was “devastating” and placed blame on the “open door policy” of his predecessor, Joe Biden. Other Republicans have directed their anger at Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson.

“JB Pritzker’s soft on crime policies must come to an end,” Darren Bailey, the Republican challenging the governor in the November election, said in a statement Tuesday calling on Trump and Pritzker to work together. “Illinois families deserve accountability.”

But Pritzker said the “failures” within the immigration system “extend beyond the borders of Illinois.”

“They’re national failures — a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst,” Pritzker said at a Tuesday news conference in Springfield. “And in my view, we have a lot of work that we need to continue to do.”

A tragic killing

Gorman’s family has said they’re “gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime.”

“When systems fail — whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act — the consequences are not abstract. They are real,” the family said in a statement.

Gorman was walking with friends along the lakefront early Thursday when she spotted a masked gunman hiding in the shadows, prosecutors said. He fired one shot as the group tried to run away, striking Gorman in the back and killing her.

Medina has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, and illegal gun possession in connection with the attack.

Medina had been taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol in May 2023, released, and then arrested again two months later for shoplifting, according to federal officials. He had an active warrant in the theft case at the time of the killing, court records show.

Mayor Johnson on Tuesday said anyone who commits a crime in Chicago “regardless of their status,” will be held accountable, as shown by the investigation of Gorman's slaying.

“The proof is in how our Chicago Police Department swiftly interacted and was able to identify, establish the case and submit to the state’s attorney,” he told reporters.

Johnson said the purpose of the Welcoming City Ordinance and Illinois Trust Act — policies that prohibit local police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement — are to ensure “undocumented individuals do not feel intimidated when they reach out to law enforcement.”

“We know that this President has not taken this situation and this challenge in our country seriously,” said Johnson. “Because my question would be: Isn’t it time for the President of the United States of America and congress to actually act and pass comprehensive immigration reform?”

As of Tuesday morning, neither Pritzker nor Johnson had spoken directly with the Gorman family.

“When something like this happens — a tragedy where a young person is gunned down — you automatically think about your own children. You just do,” Johnson said. “There’s no words that one could express that could properly console a family that lost their baby. My condolences to the Gorman family. I’m gonna continue to pray for their strength.”

When the Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz last September, officials said the immigration enforcement campaign was targeting “criminal illegal aliens” who they said had flocked to Chicago and Illinois because of sanctuary policies. In the two and a half months that followed, scores of masked agents arrested thousands of people — though the majority had no criminal records.

Agents, primarily led by outgoing U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, used extreme force throughout the campaign. They frequently deployed tear gas and pepper balls on residential streets. And immigration agents shot two people, seriously wounding Marimar Martinez and killing Silverio Villegas González in separate incidents.

After Chicago, Trump sent a surge of agents to Minneapolis. The campaign there turned out to be a breaking point for the administration, which struggled to justify the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired, and Bovino was sent back to his normal post in southern California. He is now retiring.

‘Demand accountability’

Gorman’s death is quickly becoming as symbolic to Republicans as the murder of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student slain in 2024 by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan native who was in the U.S. without legal status.

The Trump administration often invokes Riley’s name to justify mass deportations. The talking point remains that “open border” policies by the Biden administration led to such tragic deaths.

But research, including a Northwestern University study from 2024, shows immigrants were consistently less likely to commit crimes than those born in the U.S.

Riley’s family in March 2024 told NBC News they did not want her name to be used in public debates about immigration.

Last year, DHS dedicated Operation Midway Blitz to Katie Abraham, one of two women killed in an Urbana drunken driving crash in 2025, allegedly by an undocumented Guatemalan man who fled the scene.

Trump and other Republicans had previously highlighted the case and called Abraham’s family “angel parents,” a term the administration has used to describe relatives of victims killed by people who lack legal status.

Both of Abraham’s parents attended a June 2024 House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing centered on immigration policy, which featured testimony by Pritzker, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Joe Abraham, Katie Abraham’s father, has become a vocal proponent of Trump’s immigration policies, including heaping praise on the Chicago deportation operation, which he said was about creating an immigration system that was “humane and secure.”

“It would be unjust and unreasonable to separate my family’s loss from the policies that failed us,” Abraham said in an October 2025 Chicago Tribune op-ed.

“We did everything right. We worked hard, obeyed the law, paid our taxes, and trusted that government would protect us in return. That trust was broken. Our leaders — from the governor’s office on down — have treated immigration as a numbers game, not as a matter of public safety or national security.”

Joe Abraham this week wrote on social media that Gorman’s death marked “another young life lost to preventable violence in Illinois.”

“How many more? Leaders will offer words, then erase this story for political expediency,” he wrote. “Demand accountability. Enough is enough.”

Denise Lorence, Katie Abraham’s mother, has countered his views, writing in October that her daughter would not want to be associated with Trump’s deportation efforts.

“Katie would not want to be associated with an operation in which kids witness their parents being taken into custody on their way to or from school,” she wrote. “She wouldn’t support scaring kids with the use of military efforts in their neighborhoods or in their apartment.”