In Sanctuary Cities, American Lives Don’t Matter
America’s “sanctuary” communities claim to possess higher levels of compassion for others, but the reality is that the measure of a human life in these places has quietly been assigned a hierarchical value based on immigration status. By the logic of sanctuary laws, illegal aliens’ lives have the highest value, while those of American citizens have virtually none.
The most recent example is the case of Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old Loyola University freshman who was gunned down in Chicago this month.
Gorman’s alleged killer, Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan national who entered illegally under the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policy, was apprehended at the southern border in May 2023, released into the country, then arrested again for shoplifting in Chicago just weeks later. He was set free once more because the city’s sanctuary policies barred cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
In this twisted moral calculus, the importance of shielding an illegal alien from the deportation he deserves outweighs safeguarding an American teenager’s right to walk safely in her own city. Sanctuary advocates preach empathy for the “undocumented,” yet their policies create a ranking of worth: the lives of U.S. citizens like Gorman become collateral in the pursuit of ideological virtue and are expendable when they collide with the protected status of those who crossed the border unlawfully.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker own this tragedy. Their sanctuary mandates—local and state rules that bar cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—directly enabled Medina-Medina’s second release. Johnson’s Chicago and Pritzker’s Illinois treat illegal aliens as a protected class, even after arrests for crimes like theft. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has now lodged a detainer, pleading with them not to free this alleged killer again. If the pattern holds, Chicago will refuse to cooperate in removing him, consistent with Mayor Johnson’s warped sense of justice
This selective compassion is amplified by a complicit media. True victims like Gorman and Rachel Morin, the Maryland mother of five raped and murdered in 2023 by an illegal alien from El Salvador, receive fleeting, detached coverage at best. Their stories fade from the headlines quickly because, if amplified, they would expose the human cost of porous borders and sanctuary policies.
Contrast that with the media’s rush to canonize far-left agitators like Renée Good and Alex Pretti. They died in January during separate anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, interfering with federal enforcement operations. Good was shot after refusing to comply with orders and attempting to run over an officer with her car; Pretti was shot amid efforts to disrupt arrests. Yet headlines and tributes painted them as martyrs and victims of ICE overreach rather than as suffering the consequences of their own lawless extremism. Encrypted chats later revealed coordinated “rapid responders” tracking agents, clear evidence that anti-ICE protests are choreographed to turn public opinion. The press manufactured sympathy for those who obstructed justice while virtually ignoring innocent Americans like Gorman and Morin, people whose only “crime” was living in a nation that refuses to protect its own citizens.
Even more galling is the intellectual dishonesty from activists like David Bier of the Cato Institute. In a widely mocked X post reacting to DHS confirmation of Medina-Medina’s status, Bier blamed—wait for it—Donald Trump and his administration. He claimed ICE ignored the Laken Riley Act—passed in 2025 to mandate detention of criminal aliens—opting instead for “racial profiling random people on the street.” Never mind the timeline: Medina-Medina’s border release and Chicago shoplifting arrest occurred in 2023 under Biden. Sanctuary Chicago never notified ICE in the first place.
Bier’s deflection further ignores Biden’s catch-and-release floodgates, Pritzker and Johnson’s non-cooperation, and the very sanctuary lawlessness that shielded this alleged killer. This isn’t thoughtful analysis; it’s gaslighting, shifting blame from the policies that imported and protected the threat to the administration now trying to clean up the mess.
Sanctuary policies have a dehumanizing effect on our society. By design, they pick and choose whose lives matter. Illegal aliens get second, third, and fourth chances, even after committing violent crimes. American citizens like Gorman, Morin, Laken Riley, and too many others get one chance at safety, and lose it because sanctuary politicians have bet on uncontrolled mass migration as a ticket to extending their careers and power.
Sanctuary policies are a cancer on our society. They erode the rule of law, strain public resources, endanger communities, and devalue American lives in favor of those who never should have been here. Until sanctuary politicians are ostracized for their cruel policies disguised as compassion, innocents like Sheridan Gorman will lose their lives while our elites look the other way.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/in-sanctuary-cities-american-lives-dont-matter