I want to be straight about where I actually stand, because this issue gets flattened into two teams and I'm not on either one. I'm pro-legal-immigration. Not as a talking point — I've personally signed affidavits, under oath, vouching that two friends' marriages were legitimate so their spouses could stay in this country the right way. I believe in the process when the process is real.
What I don't believe in is pretending the system is working when it isn't. On March 19, 2026, an 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago freshman named Sheridan Gorman was walking on the lakefront with friends when she was shot and killed. The man charged in her murder, Jose Medina, is an undocumented Venezuelan national who'd already been arrested on a shoplifting charge in 2023 and had an active warrant out for skipping court on that case at the time of the killing. He is charged with first-degree murder — that case is still working through the courts, and he's entitled to due process like anyone else. But the warrant that was already sitting on his record before this happened is the part that should bother everyone, regardless of party.
You'll hear a lot of politicians promise to go after "the worst of the worst" — as if that's a tough stance. It isn't. It's the minimum anyone would agree to, and it quietly excuses everything short of that from ever being enforced. An active warrant that never gets served isn't a "worst of the worst" problem. It's a "we didn't do the basic job" problem.
So here's my actual position, both halves at once: make legal immigration more accessible for the people trying to do it right — I've put my own name on paper to help make that happen. And actually enforce the law we already have on the books for the people who aren't, instead of treating consistent enforcement as some kind of extreme position.
More legal immigration. Real, consistent enforcement — not just for the worst cases, for all of them. Both at once, not one traded for the other.
Colorado limits how much local police can tell federal immigration officers about who’s in their custody. Supporters call it protecting trust in immigrant communities. Follow that policy all the way to where it actually ends: someone with an active warrant sits in a local jail, or is already known to police, and nobody is required to say so to federal enforcement. He walks back out. Not because anyone broke a law — because the system was built not to ask.
I’m not talking about traffic stops, or workplace checks, or asking for papers at the grocery store. I’m talking about the exact gap that already got someone killed.
Local police should notify ICE any time someone in custody is here illegally — whether they’ve been convicted of anything or not. Being accused doesn’t need to end in a conviction for ICE to know someone without legal status is sitting in a local jail; that’s not a statement about guilt on the underlying charge, it’s a statement about who gets to stay in the country while that charge works its way through court. Those are two different questions, and blurring them together is exactly how someone with an open warrant stays invisible for years. This still isn’t mass cooperation on every immigration matter, and it’s not asking local police to enforce federal immigration law generally — it’s closing the gap that’s already cost a life.
One more thing people will say: this separates families. It doesn’t, not by itself. Nobody’s barred from leaving together — if someone’s ordered deported, their spouse and kids can go with them. What actually splits a family up is a choice about where to live, and I’m not going to pretend that’s an easy choice when a job, a school, a whole life got built here. But it’s still a choice, and it belongs to the family, not to the law being enforced.
Colorado doesn’t require E-Verify — the free federal system that checks a Social Security number against real records before someone’s hired — for private employers. It’s mandatory only for state contractors and public employers. Follow that all the way to where it ends: two businesses can each hire someone with no legal status, and only one of them broke a rule, based on nothing but who their client happens to be. Colorado does require a paperwork form — an “Affirmation of Legal Work Status” — within 20 days of hire, with state fines up to $5,000 for a first offense and $25,000 after that. But a form isn’t a check. Filling out paperwork doesn’t verify anything in real time the way E-Verify actually does.
I don’t think it’s fair to put all the weight of this on someone who crossed a border, when the system also lets the person doing the hiring skip the one tool built to catch it before it happens.
Make E-Verify mandatory for every Colorado employer, not just the ones with a government contract. If we’re serious about enforcing this law, it has to apply to the person doing the hiring, not just the person who took the job.
Note: Medina is charged, not convicted, as of this writing — case pending in court. This page will be updated if the case status changes.