Sheridan Grace Gorman was 18 years old, a freshman at Loyola University Chicago.

On March 19, 2026, she went with friends to the Chicago lakefront hoping to see the Northern Lights. She never came home.

On June 30, her mother sat in front of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement and told the country what happened to her daughter.

The hearing was titled Sanctuary Policies: Victims’ Perspectives. Jessica Gorman was there to put a face on what those words cost.

Watch the clip before you read another word.

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The issue here goes far beyond a spreadsheet of statistics. It is a mother describing the child she lost.

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans hearing page lays out the purpose plainly. The subcommittee met to examine how sanctuary policies, specifically in Illinois and California, endanger communities by putting the interests of criminal aliens ahead of the interests of Americans.

The witness list included Jessica Gorman, mother of Sheridan Gorman, along with Joe Abraham, father of Katie Abraham, Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman, and Sarah Pierce of Third Way.

That mix matters because the hearing was not built around one family’s grief alone. It paired victims’ families with law-enforcement perspective and a policy witness, putting the human cost and the political argument in the same room.

For Gorman, that meant Congress was no longer talking about sanctuary rules as an abstract local preference. It was hearing from a mother whose daughter was killed in Chicago after the government had already crossed paths with the accused man.

Gorman’s written testimony spends most of its words on Sheridan, not the man accused of killing her. It begins with the victim, not Washington’s excuses.

She described a daughter who was funny, faithful, and full of plans. She told the story of Sheridan as a child watching the buddy bench at school, the bench where lonely kids could sit so others knew to come sit with them.

That was the kind of person Sheridan was. The kind who noticed the people no one else noticed.

Then Gorman named the rest of it. The man accused of murdering her daughter is Jose Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who, in her words, should never have been in the country.

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She argued that failed border policies, sanctuary-city laws, and officials who refused to cooperate with ICE are what sent Sheridan to her grave.

Gorman was careful and direct about where she stands. She supports legal immigration and said so plainly.

What she rejects is the idea that compassion for people who entered illegally can come before the safety of American citizens already here.

She also turned the hearing back toward lawmakers, arguing that policy choices are measured in funerals when agencies refuse to enforce the law.

DHS filled in the timeline back in March.

ICE lodged an arrest detainer asking Illinois and Chicago officials not to release Jose Medina-Medina, whom DHS described as a Venezuelan criminal illegal alien arrested for killing 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman in Chicago, putting custody and cooperation at the center of the dispute.

According to DHS, Border Patrol apprehended Medina-Medina on May 9, 2023, and he was released into the country under the Biden administration. He was released again on June 19, 2023, after a shoplifting arrest in Chicago.

DHS said local reports described Sheridan being shot around 1:00 a.m. while walking in a park with friends. The accused approached wearing a mask, armed with a gun, and fired as she tried to flee.

That is the timeline Gorman brought with her to Washington. It is also why the sanctuary-policy fight cannot be separated from the families living with the consequences.

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The agency’s release made the dispute concrete: federal officials said they wanted custody, while local sanctuary rules made cooperation the fight.

Two chances to detain and remove him. Both passed up.

Then a freshman who wanted to see the Northern Lights was dead.

The question Gorman put to the lawmakers in front of her is the one that should follow every official who defends these policies.

She asked them to explain why people here illegally matter more than American citizens, and why sanctuary policies matter more than Sheridan’s life.

The defenders of those policies owe Gorman a real answer. Talking points do not erase the timeline, and they do not bring Sheridan home.

Gorman did not stop at grief. Her testimony laid out a list of concrete asks for Congress.

She backed the House Judiciary Committee’s Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act of 2026. She also pushed for ICE notification and detainer cooperation, conditioned funding where possible, transparent public reporting, civil accountability, federal prosecution authority in certain cases, serious penalties, enforcement of final removal orders, and an end to catch-and-release.

That list reads like a roadmap from a mother who studied exactly how the system failed her child.

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After she finished, Border Czar Tom Homan answered.

Homan delivered a blistering response aimed at the previous administration, saying they sold the country out for future political power.

He has spent his career around the consequences of these decisions, and he did not soften it. The release of dangerous people into American cities was a choice, made by officials who knew better.

Sheridan Grace Gorman should be finishing her freshman year. Instead her mother is testifying before Congress, asking lawmakers to make sure the next family does not sit where she is sitting.

The least Washington owes her is an honest answer to her question.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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