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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, the horrific murder in Chicago last week has reminded this Nation that the battle to defend the American people, strengthen our Republic, and yield constitutional authority for the common good is not confined to the southern border. It is being fought and lost right here in our own cities, in the heartland, in the streets where our sons and daughters walk to class or watch the Northern Lights.

Sanctuary cities are not a polite exercise of State sovereignty or some virtue of federalism. Sanctuary cities are a declaration that illegal aliens' lives matter but American citizens' lives do not.

Sheridan Gorman was an 18-year-old college student at Loyola University in Chicago. Her family described her as a daughter, a sister, and the heart of their family. She was full of life, full of kindness, and full of love that she gave freely to everyone around her.

She made people feel seen. She made people feel valued. She was the kind of kid, the kind of daughter American families hope to raise; raised polite, hard-working, and the first in her family to go away to college, carrying the hopes of parents who still believe in the American dream.

Sheridan Gorman was not some statistic. She was somebody's everything. Whether it was her friends, her family, or someone she had just met, Sheridan had a way of leaving people better than she found them.

She was only 18 years old and just beginning her journey as a college freshman, embracing new experiences, building friendships, and living the life every parent hopes their child will get to live.

But last week she was murdered in cold blood by an illegal alien from Venezuela. She was killed, her life taken from her and a daughter stolen from her family by a criminal illegal alien who would not have been in this country but for the Democrats' open border and sanctuary city policies.

Border Patrol caught him in May of 2023. The Biden administration's open border policies let him go. That was the Democrats' first chance to prevent Sheridan's murder.

Democrat-run Chicago then had another chance to prevent Sheridan's murder. It arrested the same illegal alien Jose Medina-Medina for shoplifting. But Illinois and Chicago's sanctuary policies ordered the police to say nothing to ICE.

So instead of handing him over to Federal custody, they turned this monster loose on the streets of Chicago, the safety of American citizens be damned. And then last week, the same illegal alien shot Sheridan in the back as she went on a walk with her friends.

Pause for a moment and really sit with the facts of Sheridan Gorman's murder. That illegal alien was previously in law enforcement's custody twice, and both times radical Democrat policies released him back onto the streets to prey on the American citizenry.

It is uncomfortable for Democrats to confront the reality that their policies and radical ideology are causing preventable murders of American sons and daughters at the hands of illegal aliens. So they try to deflect.

A Democrat Chicago alderwoman had the audacity to say that Sheridan was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What a disgusting lie.

Sheridan Gorman was in exactly the right place at the right time. She was exactly where an American college freshman should be: near the campus, with her friends, chasing the Northern Lights on a beautiful spring night.

No, the only person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time was the illegal alien murderer whose very presence in the country was the direct result of Democrat open border policies and sanctuary jurisdiction policies. He should have never been there. And if those policies had not existed, he would have been back in Venezuela years ago.

Rather than admit this sanctuary city policy caused the preventable murder, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker released a statement saying that ``Republicans need to stop politicizing heinous tragedies.'' What an ugly, revealing statement.

We are not politicizing the tragedy. We are exposing the truth. Sanctuary policies are getting American citizens killed. I know it; the American people know it; and deep down the Democrats know it too.

The truth is, sanctuary cities force us to confront a test, the most fundamental test of any government: Does it still understand its first and only real obligation is to protect its own citizens?

The duty is older than the Republic, older than modern politics itself. It is the reason government exists. Yet through these policies, Democrats made a deliberate choice: They sided with Jose Medina-Medina, a criminal illegal alien, over Sheridan Gorman, an American citizen and a college freshman.

They have chosen an open border's ideology over the American Nation. At root, the scourge of sanctuary cities forces us to answer the same question as the SAVE America Act: Who or what comes first?

Is it the American people, American sons and daughters, or is it illegal aliens and this radical open borders ideology? Or, dare I say, a theology? Not in theory, not in slogans, but in practice--when the handcuffs go on, when the phone call to federal law enforcement is made or not made, when lives hang in the balance.

If the answer is not the American citizen, if the answer is not Sheridan Gorman or Laken Riley or Stephanie Minter or Katie Abraham, then we are no longer arguing about immigration policy. We are confronting something far more fundamental: whether our government still understands the basic purpose for which it exists. The American people know the answer.

Democrats' conduct--their conduct betrays their answer. Democrats value illegal aliens more than Americans. This is a sick ideology.

I actually can't believe--in a State where I come from, Harry Truman would be rolling in his grave. John F. Kennedy would be rolling in his grave.

This idea, this toxic empathy, this suicidal empathy to placate the left is driving this debate we are having right now where they don't want to fund Federal law enforcement. They would rather a sanctuary jurisdiction not tell ICE that a murderer or a rapist is being released from prison to be deported. They don't want to do that. They hold onto this altar of this crazy ideology.

So all this discussion we are having about this negotiation, I have been skeptical from the beginning. I litigated with Democrats on title 42 and ``Remain in Mexico.'' Deep down in the DNA now is something that has been lost. I don't understand it. Democrats admitted as much last night in an interview.

By failing to give illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship, this Democrat noted that ``we failed to deliver for the people we care about the most, undocumented migrants.''

The people Democrats care about most are not you or your family. Instead, it is Jose Medina-Medina and the 15 million other illegal immigrants that the Biden administration let into this country.

Once you understand this reality--that this is the driving, operating principle of the modern Democrat Party, this is not an outlier--the other actions are predictable, including this negotiation, this supposed negotiation that is happening, that is supposedly taking place.

Once you see this hierarchy of needs and wants and preferences, everything makes sense. Democrats right now value illegal aliens more than traveling Americans. That is why they have defunded DHS and TSA.

They value illegal aliens more than the American families hit by a disaster. That is why they are defunding DHS and FEMA.

They value illegal aliens more than Sheridan Gorman, Laken Riley, Stephanie Minter, or Katie Abraham. That is why they have built sanctuary cities in Chicago, in New Orleans, in Los Angeles, in Minneapolis.

As a Senator from Missouri, where we still believe the first job of government is to keep Missouri families safe, I say this plainly: Prioritizing illegal aliens to American citizens is unacceptable, and it is downright un-American.

The alternative, putting Americans first, which used to be something maybe we could agree on, is not complicated and is consistent with both the Constitution and common sense. Enforce Federal immigration laws. These laws were passed by Republicans and Democrats alike, enforced by Republican and Democrat Presidents alike until recently.

So enforce the laws. Deport the illegal aliens. Prioritize the safety of American citizens over ideology and illegal aliens because at the end of the day, this is not about ideology or politics. It is about whether or not we remain a country in which the government fulfills its most basic and fundamental obligation, a country where the law is enforced, a country where the responsibilities of governing for the common good is taken seriously, a country where the safety of its people is not treated as negotiable.

If we cannot agree to affirm all those principles, then we are drifting, slowly but unmistakably, away from the principles that sustain a free and ordered society. And that is a drift we cannot afford to ignore any longer.

I want to close by reading part of a statement from the Gorman family:

We will not allow this to be dismissed as wrong place, wrong time. This was not random misfortune. This was a violent and preventable act. We are gravely disappointed by the policy and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime. When systems fail, whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act, the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent.

This case must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of both State and Federal law. There can be no gaps, no shortcuts, and no second chances that put others at risk. Accountability must be complete.

To the Gorman family: I am so sorry for your loss. As a dad who has my first daughter headed off to college next fall, I cannot imagine the grief and the pain that you feel when you send your little girl off to college and she is murdered in cold blood by somebody who should have never been here and there were two opportunities to get him the hell out of here.

I pray for you. I pray for Sheridan and all those who loved her.

I pray for every parent who now lives with the fear that the next knock on the door will be one that destroys their world.

We will not let this be memory-holed as ``wrong place, wrong time.'' This was a violent, preventable act, enabled by radical policies that put illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.

This case must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of State and Federal laws. Accountability must be complete, and it will be. It is time--long past time--for this Senate to answer the question the American people have already answered: Whose country is this?

Enforce the laws. Deport the illegal aliens. End sanctuary cities once and for all. We must reclaim the foundational promise of this Republic that a nation of the people and by the people must be for the people. The American Government is for the American people.

The American people have made their choice clear. American citizens come first. That is the fight I came to Washington to wage, and with the help of the American people, that is the fight we are going to win.

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