When Grieving Parents Became a Political Inconvenience

Kelly Rae Robertson is a Pennsylvania-based writer and former journalist whose commentary focuses on criminal justice, public safety, government accountability, and American culture. She previously worked for more than 14 years within the criminal justice system and writes from firsthand experience.

How absolutely heartless and morally bankrupt do you have to be to look grieving parents in the eye, offer fake condolences, and then immediately dismiss their pain?

That is exactly what Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) did during the June 30, 2026, House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing. She stated plainly:

"Unfortunately, this hearing is the fourth time in this committee that we've had a hearing on sanctuary cities. The fourth time. And there's many other things that we could be doing other than this."

Jessica Gorman, mother of 18-year-old Sheridan, who was shot in the back of the head and killed in sanctuary-city Chicago, delivered a response that should haunt every politician who treats these families as political inconveniences. She spoke of a common joy among parents: the excitement of picking out her baby's first outfit to bring her home from the hospital. That memory was now overshadowed by the horror of having to pick out the last outfit her daughter would wear before being placed in a coffin and cremated.

Stop and think about what that means. Walking into a funeral home to make arrangements for your own child. The overwhelming, sickening smell of flowers mixed with formaldehyde that hits you the moment you walk through the door. For many grieving parents, that smell never truly leaves. Years later, the floral section of a grocery store can unexpectedly transport them back to the worst moment of their lives.

It's touching your child's body when it is already cold and hard. Feeling the life that once radiated from them completely gone. It's the panic that consumes your entire nervous system when the funeral director moves to close the casket, that primal scream inside your soul knowing this is the last time you will ever see their face. That finality is so crushing that it literally steals the breath from your lungs.

This is what Rep. Jayapal dismissed as something Congress has "better things to do" than discuss.

This wasn't compassion. It was a stunning display of moral callousness.

In my last op-ed for The Washington Times, I called out socialists pushing to abolish law enforcement, dismantle ICE, and empty the prisons. The response? I was called a racist, a fascist, a Zionist genocider, and a traitor. And those are just the names I can list. The others are too vulgar for print. Call me a racist all you want; I will never not back the blue. I spent over 14 years working inside a county jail and for the criminal courts. I've seen both sides of it. And if you think sympathy lies with the accused, you are wrong. Dead wrong. Calling me a racist doesn't change that. It just means you have no argument to contribute to counter mine.

The left's compassion for criminals and illegal immigrants is often presented as humanitarian. But Americans have every right to ask whether something else is driving these policies. We've watched hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars disappear into fraudulent schemes, from the Minnesota nonprofit scandal uncovered in part by independent journalist Nick Shirley to California's fake hospice fraud that siphoned millions from Medicare. We've also seen millions poured into efforts to dismantle cash bail through grants and private foundations, including initiatives that reached my former employer, Allegheny County Pretrial Services, through organizations such as the Arnold Foundation and the Heinz Endowments. When enormous sums of money consistently follow policies that weaken accountability, Americans are justified in asking who truly benefits. It certainly isn't the families left to bury their children.

Name the victims: Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, Sheridan Gorman, and far too many others. These families believe their daughters would still be alive had existing immigration and public safety laws been enforced. Sanctuary policies and open-border ideology have had devastating consequences for families like theirs, raising profound questions about the priorities of those who champion such policies.

This is the same twisted ideology that fueled "defund the police." The same sickness that calls enforcing the law "racist" and protecting Americans "oppression." They don't care about the real victims. They care about power and profit.

I've seen the hate directed at anyone who dares speak the truth. But I will not apologize for standing with law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every single day. I will not apologize for demanding that American citizens come first. And I will not apologize for saying that murderers who should have been deported never should have been here in the first place.

To every police officer reading this: thank you. We see you. We back you. And we are sick of politicians who tie your hands while American families bury their children and then have the audacity to call it "progress."

Jessica Gorman and every other Angel parent deserve far better than Jayapal's arrogant dismissal. They deserve justice. They deserve a country that values their children's lives over political grift and ideological delusion.

The time for polite silence is over. Law and order is not optional. American lives are not disposable. And backing the blue is never up for debate—no matter how many times the left screams "racist" at those of us who still believe in a safe and sovereign nation.