Chicago’s sanctuary politicians keep promising their policies make neighborhoods safer.
But one New York family buried their 18-year-old daughter, and they refuse to go quietly.
And when Trey Gowdy asked what it felt like, her father gave an answer every one of those politicians should hear.
A Night of Stargazing Ended at a Chicago Coroner’s Office
Sheridan Gorman left Yorktown Heights, New York, for Loyola University Chicago with her whole life laid out in front of her.
She never got to finish her freshman year.
Around 1 in the morning on March 19, 2026, Sheridan and a group of friends walked out to the pier at Tobey Prinz Beach in the Rogers Park neighborhood, less than a mile from campus. According to the family’s attorney, the kids wanted to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights.
Prosecutors say a man in a mask and all-black clothing lay in wait near the pier. They say he fired at Sheridan as she tried to get away, and the bullet struck her in the back. She died right there on the lakefront.
Chicago Police charged 25-year-old Jose Medina-Medina with first-degree murder and aggravated use of a firearm. The Department of Homeland Security identified him as a Venezuelan national who crossed into the country illegally in 2023. Medina-Medina has not stood trial, and the law presumes him innocent until a jury says otherwise.
But the government’s own paperwork on him tells quite a story.
According to DHS, US Border Patrol apprehended Medina-Medina and released him in May 2024. About a month later, Chicago police picked him up on a shoplifting arrest, and he walked free again.
Two chances to keep him off the streets. Two releases.
After the arrest in Sheridan’s case, ICE lodged a detainer and asked Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago officials to keep him locked up instead of turning him loose a third time. DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis didn’t bother dressing it up, saying Sheridan “was failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians.”
What Thomas Gorman Did When He Held Her Hand
The Gormans have told their story in plenty of rooms by now. They told it to Congress. They told it from the stage at the 2026 Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas.
And they told it again to Gowdy, the former prosecutor and South Carolina Congressman who now hosts Sunday Night in America on Fox News.
Gowdy aimed his question squarely at “all those politicians who support open borders and sanctuary cities.” He asked the Gormans to “tell them what it is like to hold the cold, lifeless hand of a child for the last time, a child killed by their policies.”
Jessica Gorman broke down. “I actually didn’t hold her hand. I couldn’t,” she said. “Tom did. Tom did.”
So Tom answered.
“There is nothing worse than having to go to a coroner’s office and identifying the body of your daughter,” Thomas Gorman said. He called it “a hell that I struggle every day to escape.”
Then he told Gowdy what he did in that room.
“What did I do when I held her hand?” he said. “I apologized to her. I apologized that the country that she loved failed her. And I prayed to God that I could’ve been in that body bag instead of her.”
“A hundred times over,” Jessica added. “I would have taken anyone’s place.”
Sit with that middle line for a second. A grieving father apologized to his daughter for a failure he had nothing to do with. The officials who wrote and enforced the release policies owe that apology. He’s the one carrying it.
Sanctuary Politicians Keep Calling It Compassion
Strip away the slogans and a sanctuary policy does one basic thing. It tells local jails to ignore federal requests to hold an illegal alien who already sits in custody so ICE can come collect him.
Think about what that means in practice. Nobody has to go hunting for anybody. The man is already in a cell. All the city has to do is pick up the phone and wait a few hours.
Chicago and Illinois decided even that was too much.
Jessica Gorman made that exact point to lawmakers in Washington, DC. She asked them to “explain why people here illegally matter more than American citizens” and why “sanctuary policies matter more than my Sheridan’s life.” She said cooperation with immigration authorities “was too much to ask for, but asking American parents to bury our children is somehow acceptable.”
When Democrats on the panel brushed past her, she let them have it. She reminded them “this is the fourth time you’ve had angel families,” then added, “Thanks for telling me you don’t care.”
US Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) said she testified with “extraordinary courage.” Pritzker, for his part, called the killing senseless and demanded accountability, then accused the Trump administration of politicizing Sheridan’s death.
But that complaint gets things backward. The Gormans themselves chose to make this political, and they have every right to. Thomas Gorman told the Dallas convention crowd exactly why. “Illegal immigration and sanctuary policies stole our daughter from us, and that is why we are speaking out,” he said.
At that same convention, he remembered keeping gallons of cotton-candy ice cream waiting for a little Sheridan, the kind of thing dads do without thinking twice. Then he jumped ahead to the medical examiner’s office. “Thirteen years later, I held that same hand,” he said.
Illinois Keeps Producing Families Like This One
The Gormans aren’t the only Illinois family in this club nobody wants to join.
Fox News reported that in January 2025, an illegal alien named Julio Cucul-Bol crashed into the car 20-year-old Katie Abraham was riding in near Urbana and left the scene. Her father, Joe Abraham, described the state’s immigration policies as “so reckless, so radical, so extreme.”
And the national press barely blinked at Sheridan’s case at first. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tore into the networks for it, pointing out that NBC gave the story roughly 23 seconds. “It’s despicable the lack of coverage of this young woman’s case, of her life and the way that it was tragically cut short,” Leavitt said.
Thomas Gorman put his finger on why that happens. “This is just another talking point for a lot of our government officials and even community members, but this is our life,” he told Gowdy. “We have to deal with this every day.”
It’s tempting to say sanctuary laws are just a waystation on the road to the abolish-ICE crowd’s real goal, and that the next step is no detainers honored anywhere, for anyone.
Maybe that’s running a little ahead of the evidence. Plenty of Democrats learned not to say “abolish ICE” out loud anymore.
But watch which direction the policies keep moving. Fewer phone calls to ICE. More releases. More lawsuits against federal enforcement. And the bill for all of it keeps landing on families like the Gormans, who never voted for any of it.
Thomas Gorman told Gowdy where his family goes from here. “And we will fight so no other parent has to deal with this,” he said.
Sheridan walked out on that pier to look up at the sky. Her parents are still waiting for somebody in Chicago or Springfield to look them in the eye.
Sources: Fox News, “Sanctuary city policies aren’t protecting communities, they’re protecting criminals: Sheridan Gorman’s father” (Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy); Townhall, “Sheridan Gorman’s Father Spoke With Trey Gowdy, and What He Had to Say Is Heartbreaking”; WLS via WAFF, “Man accused of killing college student as she walked with friends was in US illegally, DHS says”; PIX11, “Man accused of killing NY-native and Loyola student identified by DHS”; ABC News Radio, “Undocumented immigrant arrested in killing of Loyola University Chicago student: DHS”; Newsweek, “What Happened to Sheridan Gorman? Mother Slams Sanctuary Laws After Murder”; The American Tribune, “Grieving Father Goes on the Warpath Against Sanctuary Policies”; Fox News, “Father of slain 20-year-old killed by illegal immigrant issues stark warning after Sheridan Gorman killing”; MegynKelly.com, “Illegal Immigrant Accused of Murdering Sheridan Gorman in Chicago Makes First Court Appearance”