Our heart goes out to Megan Bos’s family. Losing a child is unimaginable, and we cannot begin to comprehend the pain her family must be experiencing.

Unfortunately, as has been the norm for those who opposed the Pretrial Fairness Act, State Representatives Patrick Sheehan and Tom Weber have used this tragedy to attack the state law that ended the use of money bond. Because of the Pretrial Fairness Act, the size of a person’s bank account is no longer the main factor determining who is released pretrial. 

The legislators have falsely blamed the law for the pretrial release of Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, who is accused of hiding Ms. Bos’s body after she died from a drug overdose in his home. He is not charged with her murder or harming her in any way or even providing her with drugs. As the Representatives know, before passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act, Mr. Mendoza-Gonzales also could not have been detained for the charged offenses. At most, he would have been ordered to pay a sum of money to secure pretrial release—as people routinely did in even much more serious cases. Blaming Mr. Mendoza-Gonzales’s release on the end of money bond is simply an opportunistic political stunt.

Based on the facts available to the public, Mr. Mendoza-Gonzales has complied with all of the conditions of his pretrial release. In fact, his case was scheduled to go to trial this November—that is, until his arrest on July 19th by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Disturbingly, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now sharing gory fabricated details as part of its attempts to villainize immigrants through false accusations. A statement from DHS falsely claimed that Ms. Bos had been decapitated, an accusation both her mother and the Lake County Coroner have publicly dismissed. President Trump also used Truth Social to attack pretrial reforms.

In reality, U.S. drug policy is responsible for Megan Bos’s death. The criminalization of drugs is the driving factor behind unsafe drug supply and the overdose epidemic. This dynamic, coupled with the federal government’s attacks on immigrants, appears to have deterred Mr. Mendoza-Gonzales from simply contacting authorities in the wake of Ms. Bos’s death.  
While far too many Illinois communities and families are still suffering from the policies of the failed War on Crime and War on Drugs, our state continues to make progress in addressing those harms and towards creating a public safety system that protects all Illinoisans. Good public safety policy requires honesty about what works and what doesn’t. It’s a long shot, but we hope the Representatives and the federal government tell the truth in the future instead of lying to the public about evidence-based reforms that are working.