Neil Steinberg turns a murdered Loyola student into a prop for his immigration sermon — and calls it journalism
There are bad columns, there are embarrassing columns, and then there are columns so morally upside down that they tell you everything you need to know about the institution that printed them. Neil Steinberg’s latest effort in the Chicago Sun-Times — written in the wake of the murder of Loyola freshman Sheridan Gorman — is one of those columns.
If you want a case study in why so many Americans have stopped trusting the media, look no further. A young woman is shot in the back and killed on a Chicago beach, allegedly by a Venezuelan immigrant who had no business being in this country in the first place — and Steinberg’s instinct is not to ask how this happened or how it might be prevented. No, his instinct is to scold the public for noticing.
That is where we are.
Let’s start with the obvious, which Steinberg seems determined to obscure: Sheridan Gorman is dead. She was 18 years old. A freshman. A life just beginning. That should be the center of any honest discussion. What went wrong? Who failed? Could this have been prevented? Those are the questions that matter.
But Steinberg isn’t interested in any of that. Instead, he declares that there is “no debate” over immigration — only “dehumanization.” In other words, the moment you connect a crime to immigration policy, you have committed a kind of moral offense. The facts of the case are secondary. The policy implications are forbidden. The only acceptable response is silence — or better yet, compliance with the approved narrative.
That is not journalism. That is indoctrination.
Of course there is a debate. There has always been a debate. There is a debate over whether the United States should have borders that mean anything. There is a debate over whether people who enter the country illegally — or overstay and remain here illegally — should be removed. There is a debate over whether sanctuary cities like Chicago should obstruct cooperation with federal immigration authorities. And yes, there is a debate over whether crimes committed by individuals who should not be here at all represent a failure of policy.
Steinberg tries to wave all of that away with a familiar sleight of hand: Not all immigrants commit crimes. Well, of course not. Nobody serious argues otherwise. However, that is not the point, and pretending it is the point is intellectually dishonest.
The real question is far simpler: Should Americans be forced to accept preventable crimes committed by people who had no legal right to be here in the first place?
If the answer is "no" — and any sane society would say "no" — then immigration enforcement is not optional. It is essential. Because the entire purpose of enforcement is to reduce precisely these kinds of risks. Even one preventable death is too many when the system is designed to stop it from happening.
Steinberg doesn’t want to engage with that argument, because he knows where it leads. So instead, he reaches for the most overused, most reckless rhetorical weapon in the modern media arsenal: The Nazi comparison. He invokes the treatment of Jews in 1930s Germany. He suggests the United States is building “detention camps.” He implies that immigration enforcement is the moral equivalent of historical persecution.
This is not just wrong. It is obscene.
To compare the enforcement of immigration law in the United States — complete with due process, legal protections, and public scrutiny — to the systematic extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany is an insult to history and to common sense. It is also a transparent attempt to shut down debate by smearing anyone who disagrees as morally beyond the pale. Once you’ve labeled your opponents as Nazis, you don’t have to answer them. You just condemn them.
That is the entire game.
But beneath the hysteria, Steinberg accidentally reveals something important. For him — and for much of the elite media class — the problem isn’t how immigration laws are enforced. The problem is that they are enforced at all. The very idea that a nation has the right to distinguish between lawful and unlawful presence is treated as suspect. Enforcement becomes “abuse.” Deportation becomes cruelty. Borders themselves become an embarrassment.
Fine. If that’s your position, then have the courage to say it plainly. Say that immigration law should effectively cease to exist. Say that anyone who gets here should be allowed to stay. Say that American citizens must accept whatever consequences follow from that policy. At least that would be an honest argument.
But don’t hide behind moral theatrics and pretend that anyone who raises legitimate concerns about crime, sovereignty, or public safety is engaging in “dehumanization.”
Chicago is living with the consequences of this kind of thinking every day. A political class that treats enforcement as a dirty word. A media class that treats dissent as a moral failing. A city that declares itself a sanctuary while struggling to maintain basic order. And then, when something goes horribly wrong, the same people who created the conditions for failure insist that we learn nothing from it.
That is exactly what Steinberg is doing here.
What makes his column especially offensive is the way it treats Sheridan Gorman herself. She is not really the subject of the piece. She is a device — a narrative inconvenience that must be managed. Her death is not an occasion for reflection or accountability. It is a problem to be neutralized before it leads to the wrong political conclusions.
Think about that. An 18-year-old girl is murdered, and the priority of a major Chicago columnist is to make sure nobody draws the “wrong” lesson from it.
That is not compassion. That is moral narcissism.
And it is part of a broader pattern. Time and again, when crimes intersect with politically sensitive issues — immigration, policing, public safety — the media reflex is not to inform the public but to shape its reaction. Facts are filtered. Context is manipulated. The audience is lectured. The goal is not understanding. The goal is control.
No wonder trust has collapsed.
The Sun-Times should know better. Chicago deserves better. At a time when residents are increasingly anxious about safety, when confidence in public institutions is eroding, and when the city is struggling to maintain even a basic sense of order, the last thing we need is a press corps that treats legitimate concerns as moral defects.
We need reporters and columnists willing to ask hard questions. We need a media willing to hold policymakers accountable. We need honesty about trade-offs and consequences. What we got instead from Neil Steinberg is a sanctimonious rant that equates law enforcement with historical evil and treats a murdered young woman as little more than a rhetorical inconvenience.
He says there is no debate.
On that, he may be right — at least within the confines of his own worldview. Because for people like Steinberg, the debate is already over. The conclusions are predetermined. The moral lines are drawn. And anyone who disagrees is not just wrong, but illegitimate.
The rest of us, however, are still living in the real world. A world where policies have consequences. A world where failures cost lives. A world where Sheridan Gorman should still be alive.
If that reality makes some people uncomfortable, good. It should.
Because what’s truly indefensible is not pointing out the connection between bad policy and tragic outcomes.
What’s indefensible is pretending that connection doesn’t exist.
