When Dalilah Coleman was five years old, she had dreams of being a gymnast. Now, at age seven, she is permanently disabled — more familiar with feeding tubes than the low beam.

In 2024, Dalilah was the victim of a six-car pileup in Adelanto, California, triggered by an illegal immigrant driving a truck who wrongfully obtained a license. The accident left Dalilah with a traumatic brain injury, the inability to talk, and cerebral palsy. 

“I reject your guys’ sympathy,” Dalilah’s father, Marcus Coleman, told Democratic lawmakers during a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement hearing on sanctuary cities on Monday. “I hold each and every one of you responsible for it, and I always will,” he said emotionally. 

Coleman noted that not a single Democrat before him had reached out to him before the hearing to offer their condolences. “You guys do it right here. You guys are grandstanding on top of your soapbox. This is when you guys care. Right here inside this room is the only time you guys care. I’ve never received anything from anybody over here at all regarding my daughter or my family or anything,” he emphasized. 

Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Stand that Coleman was right to address the politicians whose policies caused his family such hardship. “Video of his remarks should play on loop throughout the country until sanctuary policies end,” Ries asserted. “God bless Mr. Coleman for so strongly calling out some committee members’ theatrics and fake sympathies straight to their faces. And for not only rejecting their TV expression of sympathy but blaming them for the very sanctuary policies that destroyed his daughter’s life.”

In February 2026, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) introduced the Dalilah Law, a bill that would ensure illegal immigrants cannot obtain driver’s licenses. In March, the legislation passed in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and now awaits a full vote on the House floor and in the Senate. 

During the hearing, Coleman pleaded with the members that sanctuary cities are unfair: “If I moved into your house without your permission, and I started sitting there derailing your guys’ household of taking from your guys’ [money] and your guys’ food … you guys would have me either kicked out, ask me to move out, or have the police escort me out. It’s the same thing in the United States. These people come here. We did not invite them here.”

Coleman made sure to share in his remarks that his wife and Dalilah’s mother, Ileana, is also an immigrant — legally. In his official statement for the hearing, Coleman explained, “My family is made up of immigrants. We are not racist. We are not anti-immigrant. And I will not allow legitimate concerns about illegal immigration and public safety to be dismissed as hatred toward immigrants.”

“This is not about where someone was born. It is not about skin color. It is not about an accent. It is about whether our laws mean something. There are millions of immigrants who came to this country, followed the process, obeyed our laws, worked hard, raised families, and contributed to America,” he continued. “They deserve our respect. And frankly, refusing to enforce our immigration laws is an insult to every immigrant who sacrificed to follow them.”

Ries underscored that Coleman’s statement comes at a time in history that makes it especially potent. “Mr. Coleman’s statement is even more powerful coming on the heels of Angel Mom Jessica Gorman, mother of slain Sheridan Gorman, testifying to the same committee in June when she chided one of the same committee members for complaining that it was the fourth time members had to listen to Angel families testify. For these sanctuary politicians, it is more important to keep deportable aliens in the country for political power than to prevent avoidable death and destruction of American lives. They cannot be publicly excoriated enough.”