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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., decried Democratic sanctuary policies, saying they “worked exactly as the Democrats intended,” allowing the murder of Chicago college student Sheridan Gorman.
Speaking with reporters at the U.S. Capitol, Johnson lamented that “but for that crazy set of policies, this young lady would still be alive.”
Gorman, an 18-year-old student at Loyola University Chicago, was shot and killed on March 19, allegedly by Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Medina-Medina. He had been previously apprehended and released by U.S. Border Patrol under the Biden administration in 2023 and was arrested again for shoplifting shortly after entering the country.
Johnson remarked that “the irony of all this is that the system did not fail Sheridan.”
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“That worked exactly as the Democrats intended,” he said. “You had Democrats in charge of the White House, in charge in the city of Chicago, open borders policy, sanctuary city policies. They coddled the criminal illegal alien, they empowered, they allowed this to happen.”
Mass outrage has erupted across the country since Gorman’s killing, with some comparing it to the 2024 killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, which became a watershed case in the presidential election.
Among the critics of Chicago’s Democratic leaders is Gorman’s family, which is pushing back on comments that her death was a “senseless tragedy” and demanding accountability for what they call systemic failures. The Gorman family on Wednesday released a statement criticizing both Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, saying that her death “demands accountability.”
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Johnson said the fact that open border and sanctuary policies worked as intended is “why we’re so angry about it.”
“He was in the custody of law enforcement twice, and there were two chances to stop Sheridan’s killer. But Democrats’ open borders guaranteed his release, and their soft-on-crime sanctuary policies ensured his impunity. And that’s why this happened. And Sheridan Gorman should still be with us and her entire life still ahead of her.”
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“How many more times did this story have to be repeated? Everybody needs to be asking that question,” he went on, adding, “Unfortunately, the Democrats’ agenda is going to continue to come at the expense of American citizens, innocent American people. As long as the Democrats insist on shielding dangerous criminals from our laws.”
Fox News Digital’s Adam Sabes contributed to this report.