First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Two New York parents are saying it plainly, and they are not stopping. Jessica and Tom Gorman of Yorktown, whose 18-year-old daughter Sheridan was shot dead in Chicago, blame the sanctuary policies championed by Governor Kathy Hochul and Democrats for putting her killer on the street. In a television ad for Rep. Mike Lawler, Tom Gorman says: "The sanctuary policies being pushed by Kathy Hochul and Democrats killed our daughter. This has to stop."
Sheridan Grace Gorman was a freshman at Loyola University Chicago. On March 19, 2026, walking with friends near the lakefront in Chicago's Rogers Park — they had gone hoping to see the northern lights — she was shot and killed. The man charged with her murder, Jose Medina, is a Venezuelan national with no lawful status in the United States. He was apprehended by Border Patrol near El Paso in May 2023 and released into the country; he was later arrested in Chicago for shoplifting and released again; and when he failed to appear in court, a warrant was outstanding. He now faces charges including first-degree murder. At each step, the Gormans say, a phone call to ICE — enforcement of a detainer — could have taken him off the street.
Jessica Gorman has carried that charge into hearing rooms and onto national television. Testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled "Sanctuary Policies: Victims' Perspectives" on June 30, she asked: "Why does my child matter less than an illegal immigrant? Why?" At a Yorktown Heights press conference in July, she said: "A 10-second phone call from the Chicago Police Department to ICE could have saved my daughter's life. Ten seconds." And on Fox News this month, she said of Hochul's New York: "Our New York families, our children. They're collateral in her policies." Tom Gorman puts it in one line: "Sanctuary policies has a face. It is the face of my beautiful, spirited 18-year-old daughter."
Governor Hochul's office, asked about the case in July, called the murder "a tragedy" and said the perpetrator, if guilty, "should serve the maximum sentence and then be deported" — while defending a policy of focusing local law enforcement on "actual criminals, not assisting in ICE operations that harass innocent people and split apart families." In this month's gubernatorial debate, her opponent Bruce Blakeman pressed her to apologise to families like the Gormans and to return their calls; Hochul called such crimes "heartbreaking," said she abhors all crimes regardless of the perpetrator, and moved on — no apology tied to sanctuary policy, and no answer on the calls.
So the fight is now at the centre of New York's governor's race: a mother and father who buried their daughter demanding that New York cooperate with ICE, and a governor defending the policy they hold responsible. The Gormans say they will keep speaking until it changes.
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