Jessica Anne Gorman, whose 18-year-old daughter was shot and killed in Chicago, took aim at Democratic members of Congress she says treated grieving families with open contempt during hearings on sanctuary city policies, and she did it with some of the most powerful law enforcement officials in the country standing behind her.
Gorman spoke Thursday at a gathering in Washington, D.C., where she recounted both the death of her daughter, Sheridan Gorman, and the experience of testifying before Congress about the sanctuary policies she blames for putting a charged killer back on the street. Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, border czar Tom Homan, and drug czar Sara Carter all attended the event, which honored families of violent crime victims.
Sheridan Gorman, a Loyola University Chicago freshman from New York, was shot and killed in March 2026 while visiting friends near a pier and lighthouse along the Chicago lakefront. She was 18 years old. Jose Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan national who the Department of Homeland Security confirmed had entered the country illegally, has been charged with her murder.
Before the shooting, Medina had been arrested on a shoplifting charge in Chicago and released, without Immigration and Customs Enforcement ever being notified, thanks to the city's sanctuary policy. That policy bars local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in most cases. Had ICE been contacted, Medina could have been detained and removed from the country before he ever crossed paths with Sheridan Gorman.
Jessica Gorman saved her sharpest criticism for Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the Washington State Democrat. Gorman told the gathering that during a congressional hearing on sanctuary policies, the fourth such hearing, Jayapal openly complained about the proceedings and dismissed the families in the room.
Gorman told the audience:
"We were all insulted by Democrat Representative Jayapal telling me, literally telling me, and all the other angel families in the room... with disdain on her face, that there's other things they could be doing except listening to four sessions."
Each family, Gorman said, was given five minutes to tell the story of a dead child. Jayapal sat through four of those accounts before signaling she had heard enough. Gorman's turn had not yet come.
"They give us five minutes to tell our daughter's story. Our dead children's story. She listened to four before mine. She didn't want to listen to another. And, honestly, I think she should listen to everyone in this room."
Gorman also accused Rep. Jerry Nadler, the New York Democrat, of napping during the hearing. Fox News Digital reached out to Jayapal's office for comment but reported no response.
Gorman described the cumulative weight of what her family has endured, losing a daughter to a preventable crime, then watching elected officials treat her testimony as an inconvenience.
"And I thought to myself, 'Boy, the hits just keep on coming.'"
Gorman was not the only parent who spoke. Stephen Federico, whose daughter Logan Federico was killed while visiting friends at the University of South Carolina, addressed the same gathering, and broadened the indictment beyond immigration enforcement to the criminal justice system itself.
Logan Federico was shot and killed during a home break-in. Alexander Dickey, a 30-year-old described as a career criminal with dozens of prior arrests, is accused of her murder. Federico put a precise number on the failure:
"My daughter wasn't killed by an illegal alien. She was killed by a home-grown American career criminal that we arrested 39 d*** times. And he was on the street. Tell me that makes sense."
Federico did not let the system off with a shrug. He named the breakdown, piece by piece:
"Can anyone tell me, please, how a felon like that is left on the street. It's from fingerprint problems. It's from process problems. It's from weak judges. It's from weak prosecutors."
His point reinforced the broader theme of the gathering: that American families are paying the price for a system that repeatedly fails to keep dangerous people off the streets, whether the failure comes from sanctuary policies, lenient judges, or bureaucratic incompetence.
The Washington event came as the administration continues to push back against sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide. Thirteen states have adopted sanctuary policies across the board, and several major cities maintain similar protections. Border czar Homan, who attended Thursday's gathering, has been vocal about the consequences.
Homan has argued that eliminating sanctuary city policies would save thousands of lives by enabling the removal of violent criminals before they strike. He made those comments in direct response to the Gorman shooting and has pointed to recent progress, including securing cooperation from Minnesota authorities following a months-long enforcement effort in Minneapolis.
"President Trump wants to take sanctuary cities on, and we're going to continue taking them on. We've got to end sanctuary city policies, because doing so will save thousands, thousands of lives."
Chicago's sanctuary policy is central to the Gorman case. The city's rules prevented local authorities from flagging Medina to ICE after his shoplifting arrest. He remained free, and months later, an 18-year-old college freshman was dead. The policy is designed to encourage cooperation between immigrant communities and local police, its supporters say. But for families like the Gormans, the policy did not protect anyone, it shielded a man now charged with murder from the federal agency that could have removed him.
The contrast at the heart of this story is hard to miss. Families who lost children to violent crime traveled to Washington, sat before members of Congress, and were given five minutes each to describe the worst thing that ever happened to them. At least one Democratic lawmaker complained it was taking too long.
Jayapal's reported remarks, that there were "many other things" Congress could be doing, may have been procedural in intent. But to a mother who buried her daughter because a sanctuary city let a charged criminal walk, procedure is not the point. The point is that Sheridan Gorman is dead, the system that was supposed to work did not, and the people responsible for fixing it could not be bothered to listen.
Nadler, for his part, allegedly could not even stay awake.
The presence of the attorney general, the FBI director, and the border czar at Thursday's gathering sent a clear signal about where the current administration stands. These families are not being shuffled into a hearing room and handed a timer. They are being heard.
Whether that translates into policy change, the end of sanctuary protections in cities like Chicago, stronger pretrial detention for repeat offenders, real accountability for the gaps Federico described, remains an open question. But the families at that gathering were not asking for sympathy. They were asking why the system keeps failing, and why the people who run it keep looking away.
When the people who create the laws cannot sit still long enough to hear what those laws cost, the problem is not procedure. It is priorities.
