An Illinois judge said on Friday that a man accused of fatally shooting Sheridan Gorman, a Loyola University Chicago student, must remain in jail ahead of his trial.
The man, Jose Medina, a Venezuelan national the Trump administration says is in the United States illegally, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Ms. Gorman, who was out for a lakefront walk with friends last week when she was shot and killed.
The shooting left the family and classmates of Ms. Gorman, a freshman from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., shocked and in mourning. Her death also became entangled in the country’s immigration debate, with the Trump administration noting Mr. Medina’s immigration status and criticizing Illinois policies that limit cooperation with immigration agents.
“She was failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians,” Lauren Bis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said of Ms. Gorman in a statement after Mr. Medina’s arrest.
Mike Pekara, a prosecutor, told a judge on Friday that Ms. Gorman and several of her friends were walking along a pier near Loyola’s campus and looking at Chicago’s skyline around 1 a.m. on March 19 when Ms. Gorman encountered Mr. Medina behind a lighthouse.
Mr. Pekara said that Mr. Medina, who is in his mid 20s, then emerged from behind the lighthouse, wearing a black mask and holding a gun. The prosecutor said that the students began running, and that Ms. Gorman, 18, was shot in the back, killing her. The others hid and called 911.
“The victim was doing what college kids are supposed to be doing: enjoying good times with good friends,” Mr. Pekara said in court.
The public defender’s office for Cook County, Ill., said Mr. Medina was raised in Venezuela and was developmentally delayed. While he was living in South America, the office said, Mr. Medina was shot and sustained brain damage, leaving him with brain development comparable with that of a child.
The public defender’s office said Mr. Medina came to the United States in 2023 and that he had spent time in a detention center before being bused to Chicago.
Mr. Medina, who appeared in court by video because he has tuberculosis, lived with his mother near Loyola’s campus on the Far North Side of Chicago, according to his lawyer.
Court records show that Mr. Medina was arrested in 2023 and accused of shoplifting from a Macy’s store in downtown Chicago. Prosecutors said Mr. Medina did not appear in court after his release, and that there was an arrest warrant out for him in the shoplifting case at the time Ms. Gorman was shot.
Julie Koehler, a public defender representing Mr. Medina, agreed with prosecutors that her client should remain in jail ahead of a trial. She told a judge she was concerned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who have placed a detainer on Mr. Medina, would seek to remove him from the country if he were released.
Judge D’Anthony Thedford of the Cook County Circuit Court ordered that Mr. Medina remain in the county jail.
In a statement, Eileen O’Neill Burke, the Cook County state’s attorney, said her office was “committed to seeking justice for Sheridan and holding the defendant fully accountable as we prosecute this case to the fullest extent.”
Ms. Gorman was involved in a Christian student group at Loyola, and her friends recalled her as generous and fun. Her family said in a statement that they were “grateful that the court recognized the seriousness of this case and ordered that the defendant be detained.”
“Sheridan’s life was not a circumstance,” the family’s statement said. “It was a future. And it was taken from her, from us and from everyone who loved her.”
President Trump and his allies have repeatedly pointed to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants as evidence of failed Democratic policies. During the 2024 presidential campaign, the killing of Laken Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, by a Venezuelan man became a central political issue.
Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump, who ran on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, has repeatedly criticized Chicago and its political leaders over immigration policies. The administration last year sent hundreds of immigration agents to the Chicago area, where they made hundreds of arrests, clashed repeatedly with protesters and engaged in conduct that alarmed federal judges.
The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have rules that restrict cooperation with federal agents on civil immigration enforcement. The Trump administration has argued that those restrictions are unconstitutional, though a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that challenged those policies.
Chicago has long struggled with violent crime, but the number of homicides in the city has declined significantly from a Covid-era spike.
According to data published by the Chicago police this week, there had been 83 criminal homicides in the city this year. That figure was roughly the same as during the same period in 2025, but down sharply from several earlier years.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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