A Chicago man arrested for allegedly gunning down a Loyola University student was in the country illegally and captured in part because of his “distinct” limp, officials said Monday.

Sheridan Gorman, 18, was killed shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday near Tobey Prinz Beach Park, less than a mile from campus, police said.

Jose Medina, 25, was arrested Friday night and booked on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and other gun-related charges in connection with the fatal shooting of Gorman, who was from the New York City suburb of Yorktown Heights.

Medina’s scheduled court appearance on Monday was delayed after the defendant was taken to the hospital, prosecutors said. The nature of Medina’s injury or illness was not immediately disclosed.

The suspect wore black clothes and a black mask when he allegedly shot Gorman in the back in the early morning hours of Thursday, according to a Chicago police arrest report released on Monday.

Witnesses described and nearby security cameras showed the suspect “walking with a distinct limp and slow gait,” according to the report.

Cameras then caught Medina entering his apartment house on N. Sheridan Road, and a building engineer identified the suspect as a resident, the police report said.

Medina had been previously “apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and released into the country,” according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.

The suspect was released again on June 19, 2023, following a shoplifting arrest in Chicago, federal officials said.

Gorman was “failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.

The report didn’t make clear what, if any, motive the suspect might have had for the attack.

“We are gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime,” a statement from Gorman’s family said.

“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,” the family said.

It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday if Medina had hired or been appointed a lawyer to speak on his behalf.

Gorman’s slaying could take center stage in the nation’s ongoing debate on immigration in the same manner as Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s murder in 2024.

The suspect in her slaying, Venezuelan citizen Jose Antonio Ibarra, illegally entered America in 2022 near El Paso, authorities have said.

The Trump administration frequently invokes Riley’s name in its justification of mass deportations and other anti-immigration actions.

Riley’s family has asked that their loved one’s name not be used in this public debate.

“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country,” father Jason Riley told NBC’s “TODAY” show a month after his daughter’s death, “and it’s incited a lot of people.”

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President Trump said he is sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports as some air travelers face longer security lines due to the partial government shutdown.

“On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job,” Trump posted on social media Sunday.

The Trump administration has blamed Democrats for the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has entered its sixth week and paused paychecks for Transportation Security Administration workers.

“This pointless, reckless shutdown of our homeland security workforce has caused more than 400 TSA officers to quit and thousands to call out from work because they are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis told NPR in an email.

She said this has caused hours-long delays for travelers across the country, and said the agency will deploy “hundreds” of ICE officers “to airports being adversely impacted.”

DHS did not respond to NPR’s question of where ICE agents will be deployed.

But Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Sunday evening that agents would be at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to help with “line management and crowd control.” In a statement, he said federal agents “indicated that this deployment is not intended to conduct immigration enforcement activities.”

The head of the union that represents TSA officers denounced the plan to send ICE to airports.

“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement on Sunday.

He said TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats designed to evade detection at checkpoints.

“They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be,” he added.

The ACLU also issued a statement condemning the move, saying immigration agents at airports could “inspire fear among families.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., echoed that concern.

“The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or in some instances kill them,” Jeffries said on CNN.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, “is in charge” of the ICE deployment, Trump said. TSA and ICE are both part of DHS.

But it remains unclear exactly how the operation will work at airports.

“It’s a work in progress,” Homan said on CNN Sunday. “But we will be at airports tomorrow helping TSA move those lines along.”

Unclear duties for ICE agents

Homan said he is talking with the heads of ICE and TSA to finalize a plan, but said he expects ICE agents to relieve TSA agents of guard duty at some terminal entries and exits.

“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that,” Homan said. “There are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs, help move those lines.”

But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to have a different idea of what ICE agents could do at airports.

“They know how to run the X-ray machines because they are again under Homeland Security with TSA,” Duffy told ABC Sunday.

Duffy then warned that wait times at airports would get much worse if Congress doesn’t fund DHS by the end of next week, when TSA workers are set to miss another paycheck.

“I think you’re going to see more TSA agents — as we come to Thursday, Friday, Saturday of next week — they’re going to quit or they’re not going to show up,” Duffy said.

Scant negotiations progress

Last week, Congress failed to advance a DHS funding bill for the fifth time, leaving TSA, FEMA and other agencies in the lurch. ICE, on the other hand, still has plenty of funding after Congress allocated the the agency billions of dollars last summer as part of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The DHS shutdown started following the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minnesota. The killings sparked demands from Democrats to change ICE policy: a judicial warrant requirement, and a ban on ICE agents wearing masks, among other proposed changes.

It was not immediately clear whether ICE agents deployed to airports would wear masks, as many of them do during immigration enforcement.

Homan said he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week to discuss DHS funding, but he gave no indication that a deal was nearing.

“More conversations need to be had because we certainly can’t surrender ICE’s authorities and their congressionally mandated job,” Homan said Sunday.

As for the ICE operation at airports, Homan said agents will continue to enforce immigration laws as they deploy to terminals and security lines.

NPR’s Jennifer Ludden contributed to this story.