An 18-year-old Loyola University freshman is dead, allegedly shot in the back by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who should never have been on American soil, and Chicago's mayor thinks the appropriate response is amnesty.
During a press conference this week, Mayor Brandon Johnson was pressed about his conduct in the wake of Sheridan Gorman's killing. His answer: Congress should pass a "comprehensive immigration reform policy" for the millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States.
That is the mayor of America's third-largest city watching a preventable tragedy unfold on his watch and concluding that what the country really needs is to legalize the people who came here illegally.
According to Breitbart, around 1:00 a.m. on March 19, Sheridan Gorman was walking with a group of friends near Tobey Prinz Beach in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood. According to police, 25-year-old Jose Medina-Medina, wearing a mask, allegedly approached the group and started shooting in their direction. Gorman ran for her life. Police allege the illegal immigrant shot her in the back, killing her immediately.
She was eighteen years old.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said Medina-Medina was apprehended crossing the southern border on May 9, 2023, but was released into the United States interior under former President Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas's expansive catch-and-release policy. In June 2023, just weeks after his release, Medina-Medina was arrested in Chicago for shoplifting. Thanks to the city and state's sanctuary policies, the illegal immigrant was never turned over to ICE agents.
Caught at the border. Released. Arrested again in Chicago. Released again. And now a college freshman is dead.
At the press conference, a reporter confronted Johnson with a fact that would stagger most elected officials: at the exact moment Sheridan Gorman was being laid to rest, the mayor was at a No Kings rally in Chicago, screaming into a microphone for the rights of illegal immigrants. The reporter did not mince words:
"Many people, hundreds of thousands, in fact, of real Chicagoans have contacted me and have told me that they thought that was an incredibly poor taste … very, almost hateful. Black and brown people, by the way, told me that they found that to be that you were dancing on her grave, literally that you were up and down just dancing, doing a big dance on her grave."
The reporter then asked Johnson directly whether he would apologize to Gorman's parents, noting that the mayor's policies "directly led to Sheridan's death."
Johnson did not apologize. Instead, he offered this:
"Here's what I'll do, I will again acknowledge the tragedy of the loss of life here. And look, burying a child that no parent should have to do especially as someone who is a parent. The tragedy that occurred is one that, quite frankly, it challenges us to do better to ensure that we are protecting people. As far as the call for No Kings, what I said, and I still stand by this, is that we do have to protect working people, we do have to ensure the immigrant community is not being assaulted. Violating people's constitutional rights does not make us safer … and I will continue to stand by that."
Read that again slowly. A reporter asked him to apologize for the death of an eighteen-year-old girl allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant, whose sanctuary city shielded him from deportation. Johnson's response was to pivot to protecting "the immigrant community" from being "assaulted" and to warn against "violating people's constitutional rights."
Sheridan Gorman's constitutional rights were violated in the most final way imaginable. The mayor does not appear to have noticed.
Then came the policy prescription. Johnson told reporters:
"If this was really about safety, we would dig in and pass comprehensive immigration reform policy, so has the federal government failed in that regard? It certainly has."
This is the rhetorical move that sanctuary city politicians have perfected: something terrible happens because of policies they championed, and they blame someone else for not passing the policies they actually want. Johnson's city refused to hand an illegal immigrant over to ICE. The federal government under Biden released Medina-Medina into the country in the first place. And Johnson's solution is not to cooperate with federal enforcement. Not to rethink sanctuary protections. Not to look a grieving family in the eye and say he was wrong.
His solution is amnesty.
The logic is breathtaking. A man who entered the country illegally, was released, committed a crime, was shielded from deportation by sanctuary policy, and then allegedly murdered a teenager somehow proves that we need to grant legal status to millions more people in similar situations. In Johnson's framework, every failure of enforcement becomes an argument against enforcement.
Every checkpoint that existed to prevent this killing was deliberately dismantled:
This was not a gap in the system. This was the system functioning exactly as its architects intended. Catch-and-release was the policy. Sanctuary protections were a policy. Non-cooperation with ICE was the policy. Sheridan Gorman did not fall through the cracks. She was killed by the cracks, and the people who built them are now asking for more of the same.
Notice what Johnson never said. He never said sanctuary city policies should be reexamined. He never said his city would begin cooperating with ICE. He never acknowledged that a criminal, illegal immigrant was on Chicago's streets because Chicago chose to keep him there. He "acknowledged the tragedy" the way politicians acknowledge weather: as something that simply happened, detached from any decision anyone made.
When the reporter noted that Johnson was rallying for illegal immigrants' rights at the same hour Gorman's family was burying her, the mayor did not express regret about the timing. He stood by his remarks. He stood by all of it.
Brandon Johnson's press conference was a case study in how a certain kind of politician processes tragedy. The loss is "acknowledged." The grief is noted in the abstract. And then the conversation is redirected, as quickly as possible, toward the policy outcome they wanted before the tragedy occurred.
Johnson wanted amnesty before Sheridan Gorman was killed. He wants amnesty after. The death of an eighteen-year-old girl at the hands of an illegal immigrant that his city protected changed nothing about his position. It simply gave him a new sentence to precede the same talking point: "The tragedy that occurred is one that, quite frankly, it challenges us to do better."
Doing better, in Johnson's telling, means legalizing the people who came here illegally, not enforcing the laws that might have kept Sheridan Gorman alive.
Her parents buried their daughter. The mayor held a rally. And now he wants you to believe that more of everything that led to her death is the path to safety.
