She did not hedge it and she did not soften it. Calling the governor a liar straight to the camera, Jessica Gorman said Kathy Hochul is deceiving the country about the state her daughter grew up in — a state whose leaders, in her words, choose to protect illegal immigrants over the safety of American families.
Sheridan Gorman was 18 years old, a freshman at Loyola University Chicago from Yorktown in Westchester County, when she was shot and killed on March 19 while walking with friends near Lake Michigan. The man charged in her killing, 25-year-old Venezuelan national Jose Medina, entered the United States illegally and had been apprehended and released in earlier encounters with law enforcement. He has been charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty. Her mother calls the killing 100 percent preventable: a man who should have been in federal custody, she says, was free on a Chicago street because sanctuary policies kept him there.
The fight over the word "sanctuary" is what brought her to the governor's doorstep. In June 2025, Hochul told the House Oversight Committee that "New York is not a 'sanctuary state' for criminals," and her office has held that the state cooperates with federal authorities on criminal cases — pointing to judicial warrants honored and prison-release notifications sent to ICE. But earlier this year Hochul signed a state law restricting local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on immigration enforcement, and her critics say that law is exactly what the word sanctuary means, whatever Albany calls it.
Jessica Gorman has carried the argument well beyond her own television appearance. She testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration in June, challenging lawmakers to sit with her, look her in the eye, and explain why illegal immigrants matter more than her daughter. In September she joined other victims' families in Washington as top administration officials, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and border czar Tom Homan, honored Americans killed in violent crimes. And this week she and her husband Tom appear in a new television ad backing Rep. Mike Lawler's reelection in New York's 17th District, accusing his Democratic challenger Cait Conley of supporting sanctuary policies — with Tom Gorman looking into the camera to say the sanctuary policies pushed by Hochul and Democrats killed their daughter.
Conley, an Army veteran and former Homeland Security official, has pushed back, saying her heart breaks for the family and that the government failed Sheridan. Her campaign says she supports revoking 287(g) agreements so local police focus on their own communities rather than doing the federal government's job — while still holding criminals accountable. Hochul's office, for its part, has not backed off its line that there is no sanctuary in New York for people who commit crimes.
For Jessica Gorman, the labels and the legal arguments miss the point. She is not a pundit or a candidate. She is the mother of an 18-year-old who will never come home, and she told the country on national television that the governor of her home state looked Americans in the eye and lied about what New York is.