CHICAGO — A Cook County judge on Friday denied the release of a man accused of killing Sheridan Gorman, the 18-year-old Loyola University, Chicago student whose shooting death became a lightning rod in the polarizing debate over immigration policy.

José Medina, 25, who is charged with murder and other felonies, appeared remotely for a detention hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building that shed more light on the man’s background as attorneys laid out additional elements of the shooting and detailed how he came to be in Chicago.

Medina, a Venezuelan national, shot and killed Gorman while she took in the skyline with friends on a pier around Tobey Prinz Beach Park in Rogers Park around 1 a.m. on March 19, prosecutors alleged. The tragedy made international news when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it had lodged a detainer request asking Illinois officials not to release Medina, who, according to the agency, was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on May 9, 2023, and “released into the country” under the administration of President Joe Biden.

But Medina’s public defender Julie Koehler said that after he turned himself in to authorities in Texas in 2023, Medina was held in a detention center and asked to be returned to Colombia, where he had been living. Instead, Koehler said, he was “placed on a bus and sent to Chicago.”

Texas during that period was sending thousands of migrants from the border to “sanctuary cities” in what many criticized as a political move.

Gov. JB Pritzker’s office made no immediate comment on Friday. A spokesman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the office had no record of Medina on any passenger list as being transported on any buses affiliated with the state of Texas, but that it’s possible Medina was bused by a nongovernmental organization or a nonprofit.

Judge D’Anthony Thedford ordered that Medina remain detained while awaiting trial, telling the defendant that the “randomness” of the shooting poses a significant threat to the community.

“It is difficult to imagine a greater threat than someone who hides themself and then hides in a random place in a largely deserted beach with masks on waiting for their prey,” Thedford said.

After the hearing, Gorman’s family released a statement commending the judge for detaining Medina.

“Sheridan was doing something completely ordinary — something any parent would expect their child to be able to do safely. And yet, she is not here. That is what we carry with us today.”

Medina appeared via Zoom because he has tuberculosis, making for a hybrid hearing that proceeded haltingly because of technology issues. Gorman’s family was present on Zoom, while friends attended in person, including some of those who were present during the shooting.

“There are not too many people that are more dangerous to the general community than someone who hides in the darkness and ambushes and kills a fleeing student for no reason,” Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Pekara said, arguing that Medina should remain jailed.

According to Pekara, Gorman was with four fellow Loyola students and a fifth student visitor, enjoying the night and “doing what college students are supposed to be doing” when they decided to go to the beach to see the skyline. While walking on the pier, Gorman was startled to find Medina, wearing all black and a ski mask, hiding near the lighthouse.

Gorman whispered to her friends that someone was there, Pekara said, and the group ran away. Medina fired a shot, hitting Gorman in the back, he said, while her friends took cover. The students watched as Medina paced back and forth on the pier, then went to check on their friend when the coast was clear, he said.

Investigators tracked Medina to the home he shares with his mother by using surveillance video, Pekara said. Police recovered a gun wrapped in a ski mask at his home, and his mother identified him in still surveillance photos.

In response, Koehler, his attorney, said Medina is cognitively impaired, and she made an unusual request that he remain detained in jail for his own safety.

“ICE has placed a detainer hold on José and we fear that should he be released, ICE would arrest him and deport to a third country where he would not receive due process,” she said.

In 2018, Medina was shot in the head, she said, and though he survived, he is “severely brain damaged and disabled.”

Medina and his mother fled Venezuela for Colombia after his mother was raped and forced from her home, Koehler said. Later, he came to the U.S. in 2023 “seeking safety,” she said, and turned himself in at the border.

“He was held for months in squalor in a detention center,” Koehler said. “He requested to be returned to Colombia but instead was placed on a bus and sent to Chicago two years ago.”

He contracted tuberculosis in a migrant shelter, she said. Eventually his mother followed, migrating legally to take care of her son.

The shooting unleashed a stream of political reaction, with Republicans quick to blame Pritzker and his fellow Democrats for championing the state’s sanctuary policies, using them as a political cudgel in expressing outrage over Gorman’s killing.

On Monday, President Donald Trump was asked by reporters about the fatal shooting, calling it “devastating” and blaming the border policies of the Biden administration for allowing the suspect into the U.S.

“This person came in through the open door policy of Joe Biden, and we have others,” Trump said. “They’ve hurt our country. Just remember this: Joe Biden and that gang of radical left lunatics, some very smart, but radical left and bad ideology, sick people. These people have hurt our country very badly.”

Pritzker’s office earlier this week in a statement called on the Trump administration “to stop politicizing heinous tragedies and instead focus on real solutions, like reinstating federal funds to prevent violence that support our public safety efforts.” Later, Pritzker said there were “real failures” in the nation’s immigration system that led to Gorman’s death.

Earlier this week, Gorman’s family, which has called for accountability, criticized Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker for their remarks about her death.

“We will not allow Sheridan’s name to be used in political arguments — but we will insist that her loss leads to real answers and real change,” the family said in a statement.

Medina was arrested for shoplifting in June 2023 and released on a personal recognizance bond, according to court records. Court records from that case state that Medina took $132 worth of merchandise from the Macy’s on North State Street without paying. Cook County Judge Peter González later issued a warrant for his arrest when he missed a court date in August 2023.

Arrest paperwork indicated that Medina had been living at the Leone Beach Park field house in Rogers Park, a city-sponsored shelter for migrants. The field house — about a half-mile north from where Gorman was killed — was among the scores of city-owned buildings that temporarily served as shelters for the thousands of mostly Venezuelan migrants who arrived in the city on Texas buses in 2022 and 2023.

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