“Law and order” is not an abstract political slogan. Without it, you do not have a civilized society. When law and order breaks down, it is the innocent who pay the price first, whether they live on the South Side, Rogers Park or anywhere in Chicago that we call home. Without it, we do not have community. We have fear and chaos. Without it, we do not have justice. We have death and, in some cases, retaliation.
I’m continuing on my Walk Across America. I was not in Chicago when I heard the news that 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman, a Loyola University freshman from New York, was gunned down in cold blood. The man who is accused of killing her is Jose Medina-Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan national who entered our nation illegally in 2023. He had previous arrests for shoplifting, and yet he was released onto the streets because our sanctuary politics favor illegal immigrants over law-abiding citizens.
This death comes a year after the senseless death of Katie Abraham in Urbana, Illinois. That 20-year-old girl was sitting in the back of a car at a red light in the middle of the night when a truck driven by an illegal immigrant smashed into her at 80 mph. For over a year, I watched her courageous father, Joe Abraham, do everything he could to warn elected officials that their sanctuary city policies would lead to the death of more innocents.
They ignored him. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker ignored him. They all ignored him.
They valued the White-guilt virtue they believed they gained from allowing illegal immigrants into their city, unvetted and unassimilated. They didn’t care about Katie.
And now Sheridan is dead.
This is not an isolated heartbreak. This is the fruit of a city, and a nation, that has let lawlessness fester.
On the South Side, we have lived with it for years: open-air drug markets, gang shootings that turn playgrounds into war zones and politicians who lecture us about “equity” while the body count rises. We watched as certain criminals were coddled, released and protected while the Black families trying to raise children in peace paid the ultimate price.
Now that same infestation of lawlessness has spread. The same lack of order that destroyed so many Black neighborhoods is now claiming the lives of other Chicagoans, young people from every background who simply wanted to walk by our city’s lake without fearing the deadly shock of a bullet.
SLAIN DC INTERN’S MOM URGES SHERIDAN GORMAN’S FAMILY TO ‘FIGHT BACK’ AFTER OBITUARY OLIVE BRANCH
What began as a crisis in our Black communities is now a citywide epidemic, proving once more that bad policy has no respect for ZIP codes or skin color. Every Chicagoan deserves a city where the police are empowered, borders are respected and criminals are put in prison instead of being released.
That is exactly why I am still walking these streets and why I am pouring my life into building our Project H.O.P.E. community center on the South Side. I am not building another warehouse for excuses or government handouts. I am building a place that teaches young people the God-given value of work, responsibility and respect for the law.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
I want to welcome free thinkers who understand that safety is not optional and that no community can thrive when certain criminals are placed above the citizens they prey upon. American principles demand equal justice under the law, not justice for some and leniency for others based on political correctness.
To the families of Katie Abraham and Sheridan Gorman, my heart breaks with yours. I am praying for you and standing with you. And to every leader in my city of Chicago who still defends these sanctuary policies while our streets run with blood, I say, repent.
Put the citizens first. Enforce the law without apology. Because until we do, the next victim could be any one of our children, walking any street, at any time.
