SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday said there were “real failures” in the nation’s immigration system that led to the fatal shooting of Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman last week, and added that while fixes need to be made to the system, that responsibility lies with the administration of President Donald Trump.

Gorman, 18, was fatally shot during the early-morning hours of March 19 while with her friends on the Loyola Beach Pier in Chicago’s Rogers Park community, prosecutors said. Charged in the killing is 25-year-old José Medina, who federal authorities said is a Venezuelan national who was in the U.S. without legal permission.

“This has been a terrible tragedy, and I know that the Gorman family has suffered mightily … 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 at an unrelated event, referencing that the Trump administration stepped up immigration enforcement efforts last year in Chicago and other cities where he vowed to seek deportations of noncitizens with criminal records who are in the country illegally.

The Democratic governor’s comments come as Republicans locally and nationally have blamed Gorman’s killing on Pritzker and other Democrats for supporting sanctuary policies that prevent local law enforcement from working with federal officials on immigration matters. But the governor has sought to push that blame back onto the federal government, including both Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration and Trump’s.

“And in my view, we have a lot of work that we need to continue to do,” Pritzker continued. “But it is the job of the federal government to go after immigration enforcement, and it is the job of our local and state law enforcement to prosecute or catch violent criminals and prosecute them, and we should continue to do that both on the state level and the national level.”

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Medina was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on May 9, 2023, and “released into the country” under the administration of President Joe Biden.

But, while Trump’s DHS has reiterated its criticisms of state and local sanctuary laws, the agency has not answered questions seeking further detail about Medina’s entry into the U.S., including where he was apprehended by Border Patrol or whether he came back on immigration officials’ radar after he was arrested for shoplifting in June 2023 at the Macy’s on North State Street in Chicago. At that time, Medina was living at the Leone Beach Park field house in the Rogers Park neighborhood, a city-sponsored shelter for migrants, according to the address given on his arrest report.

Following the shoplifting arrest, Medina was released on a personal recognizance bond, as was common with misdemeanor charges, with no record that he was booked in the Cook County Jail. Court records from that case state that Medina took $132 worth of merchandise from Macy’s. Cook County Judge Peter González later issued a warrant for his arrest when he missed a court date in August 2023. Medina is in custody but is reportedly hospitalized with tuberculosis.

Former state Sen. Darren Bailey, of downstate Xenia, Pritzker’s Republican opponent in the November governor’s race, said in a statement Tuesday that Gorman’s killing was “preventable” and decried Pritzker’s “soft on crime policies.”

“Gov. Pritzker and President Donald Trump must come together and find real solutions to protect Illinoisans. Families do not care about political fights — they care about the safety of their kids and their communities,” said Bailey, who also criticized Pritzker for traveling over the weekend to Washington, D.C., and California as he considers a 2028 White House bid. “Sheridan Gorman should be here today. Sadly, thanks to our Part-Time Pritzker, she isn’t.”

During a statehouse news conference on Tuesday, Illinois legislative Republicans also decried the state’s sanctuary and public safety policies under Pritzker’s leadership.

“Gov. Pritzker has gone out of his way to impede federal authorities,” said state Sen. Steve McClure, a Republican from Springfield. “This man who just murdered this innocent college student, that’s one of Pritzker’s people. That’s who he’s trying to protect. You know who we’re trying to protect? That poor college girl who got murdered.”

Meanwhile, state Sen. Mike Simmons, a Democrat from Chicago whose district includes the site where Gorman was killed, accused the Trump administration and other Republicans of politicizing “the pain our community feels right now.” He called their rhetoric “abominable.”

“This is tired stuff and people have absolutely had it with right-wing bigots vilifying immigrants,” Simmons said in a text Monday night. “I’m deeply offended.”

As the killing has become a political flashpoint, Mayor Brandon Johnson, at a news conference at City Hall in Chicago, defended the city and state’s sanctuary policies for immigrants when asked about the suspect being a Venezuelan migrant.

“Let’s just be very clear,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “The Welcoming City ordinance was passed 40 years ago by the first Black mayor in the history of Chicago, and the (TRUST) Act was passed under … Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.”

He also said that regardless of immigration status, Chicago police hold anyone who commits a crime in the city accountable. He then pivoted to pointing the finger back at Trump, saying, “If there is anything to address in this country that’s illegal, it’s everything about the Trump administration.”

The mayor expressed condolences for Gorman’s family, stressing that he understands their pain as a parent to a soon-to-be college student in the fall.

“When something like this happens in a tragedy where a young person is gunned down, you automatically think about your own children. You just do,” Johnson said. “And there’s no words that one could express that could properly console the family that lost their baby.”

In Illinois, the primary sanctuary law is the TRUST Act, signed into law in 2017 in its original form before Pritzker and the Democrat-led legislature amended it in 2021. It generally prohibits local and state law enforcement from assisting the federal government in immigration enforcement matters. In Chicago, the Welcoming City ordinance prohibits Chicago police and city employees from doing the same. Both laws have so far survived a legal challenge from the Trump administration in federal court.

The mayor also defended his administration’s efforts to stem crime, however, saying, “I’ve worked hard to reduce it, and for this particular family, that hard work did not result in their child still being here.”

On Tuesday, Pritzker said he has reached out to “local officials” who have talked to Gorman’s parents “to express my condolences, my wife’s condolences as well,” but said it’s not the right moment to speak with them as they grieve.

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—Alice Yin reported from Chicago.

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