Finger Pointing Clouds Murder of College Student
Gov. JB Pritzker at a news conference in 2025. (Photo: Chicago Tribune)
The murder of an 18-year-old Loyola University student, allegedly shot and killed by an illegal immigrant with an active warrant for his arrest, has led to more finger pointing and partisan bomb throwing by politicians.
25-year-old Jose Medina is accused of opening fire on group of people and murdering Sheridan Gorman near the Loyola campus last week. Multiple reports say Medina was in the country illegally, had an active warrant for his arrest, and had been stopped at the border in 2023 and was released into the United States.
Republicans held multiple press conferences at the Statehouse Tuesday blaming the TRUST Act, which generally prohibits local law enforcement with cooperating with immigration officials, for allowing Medina to remain in the state.
“He remained here, in our state, under policies that tied the hands of law enforcement and placed ideology ahead of public safety,” said Rep. John Cabello (R-Machesney Park), a longtime Pritzker critic and Winnebago County Sheriff’s Deputy said in a speech on the House floor. “The first duty of our government, the most basic responsibility we have in this chamber is to keep people safe. We can restore common sense to our laws. We can ensure those that pose a threat are not shielded from accountability.”
Pritzker, after multiple questions from media at an unrelated event in Springfield Tuesday, blamed the Trump administration for “multiple failures” in the immigration system.
There have been real failures. Those failures, of course, extend beyond the borders of Illinois. That’s — they’re national failures, a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst,” Pritzker said
Pritzker did not mention the TRUST Act or Illinois’ sanctuary status, but his office sent out a “fact sheet” on the law late Tuesday evening that included numerous talking points, including “The TRUST Act does not prohibit state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal law enforcement agencies on criminal investigations.”
The document defends the provision of the law preventing state and local law enforcement from transferring or detaining a person on behalf of federal immigration agents.
