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 President Donald Trump’s administration.

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 Jose 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.

“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.”

Pritzker’s comments come as Republicans locally and nationally have attempted to lay blame for Gorman’s killing on the governor and other Democrats for supporting sanctuary policies that prevent local law enforcement from working with federal officials on immigration matters.

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 fieldhouse in Rogers Park, 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 Gonzalez later issued a warrant for his arrest when he missed a court date in August 2023. Medina is currently in custody but is reportedly hospitalized with tuberculosis.

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. “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 before Pritzker took office, and 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 Monday, 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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(Yin reported from Chicago.)

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