Her name was Sheridan Gorman. She was 18 years old, a freshman at Loyola University in Chicago, and on March 19th she was shot execution-style near Tobey Prinz Beach Park. She did not survive.
The man accused of killing her is Jose Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan national who entered the United States illegally and was released at the border by the Biden administration in May 2023. He had already had contact with the Chicago Police Department — a prior shoplifting arrest — and had been released. Chicago is a sanctuary city. Chicago does not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Chicago did not hold Jose Medina for ICE.
And now an 18 year old who had her whole life ahead of her is dead because of it.
Two days after the murder, Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich and liberal strategist Chris Hahn appeared on NewsNation to discuss what happened. What followed was a perfect encapsulation of why nothing ever changes.
Hahn’s response to the execution-style murder of a college freshman by a Venezuelan illegal alien who had already been through the Chicago criminal justice system and walked free: “Immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate, particularly violent crimes, than do native-born Americans. To boil this down into immigration policy is wrong. It’s law enforcement. This is a horrible situation. It should not be politicized.”
He pivoted to guns.
An 18-year-old girl was shot execution-style by a man who should not have been in the country, who had already been arrested and released, and who was free to roam Chicago’s streets because the city’s sanctuary policies prevented anyone from asking about his immigration status. And the liberal strategist’s contribution to the conversation was a statistics talking point and a request not to politicize it.
Katie Pavlich did not accept the pivot.
“Why are you willing to run the risk?” she asked. “Given they shouldn’t be here.” She pressed the question that every parent of a college student needs to hear answered: “How many crimes should illegal aliens commit before we get rid of them?”
Her core argument was the one no amount of statistics can refute: “If this guy wasn’t here, he wouldn’t have committed this crime.” The murder of Sheridan Gorman was not a policy abstraction. It was not a data point in an immigration debate. It was a specific, identifiable, preventable death — preventable at the border in May 2023, preventable after the shoplifting arrest, preventable at any point in a two-year window when Jose Medina was inside the United States and available for deportation.
Watch Pavlich and Hahn’s exchange:
None of those preventions happened. Sheridan Gorman went to college in Chicago, walked near a beach park, and did not come home.
The mechanics of how this happens are worth understanding, because they are not an accident. They are policy.
Step one: The Biden administration opened the southern border to a level of mass entry not seen in modern American history. Jose Medina was released in May 2023 — one of millions processed and released into the interior during the Biden years, given a court date they were statistically unlikely to attend, and sent into American cities to build lives the federal government would not interrupt.
Step two: Sanctuary city policies ensured that when Medina had contact with local law enforcement for shoplifting, no one asked about his immigration status, no one contacted ICE, and no one held him while deportation proceedings could be initiated. Chicago made that choice deliberately. Chicago calls it a value.
The result of step one plus step two is a Venezuelan national with a prior arrest record walking free in a city that had decided his presence was more important to protect than the safety of its own residents.
Chris Hahn asked that the story not be politicized. He invoked statistics. He talked about guns.
Here is the statistic that matters: Sheridan Gorman was one person. She had a name. She was 18 years old and in her first year of college when someone who had been released at the border, arrested in Chicago, and released again shot her execution-style.
The “don’t politicize it” request always arrives right on schedule — in the hours after a preventable tragedy, when accountability would require admitting that specific policy choices by specific elected officials produced a specific outcome. Politicizing it would mean asking why Biden released Jose Medina in 2023. It would mean asking why Chicago declined to hold him after the shoplifting arrest. It would mean asking whether the officials who made those decisions bear any responsibility for what happened near Tobey Prinz Beach Park on March 19th.
Those are uncomfortable questions for the people who made those decisions. They are the only questions worth asking.
Her name was Sheridan Gorman. Say it out loud. Remember it. And the next time someone asks you whether border policy and sanctuary cities are abstract political debates, remember that they aren’t.
