Mayor Brandon Johnson and city officials unveiled Wednesday the “Abolish ICE” snowplow, the winner of this year’s snowplow naming contest, which drew a record number of submissions.
The mayor said the winning snowplow name is a message to the federal government that U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t welcome in Chicago.
But the unveiling in West Town came as Chicago has again become a focal point of America’s debate over immigration policies following last week’s fatal shooting of an 18-year-old college student.
Loyola University Chicago freshman Sheridan Gorman was shot and killed near the Rogers Park campus. The alleged gunman, Jose G. Medina, is a Venezuelan immigrant who had been taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol in May 2023, released, then arrested again months later on shoplifting charges.
One heckler at Wednesday’s event called out the mayor for unveiling the snowplow less than a week after Gorman’s death.
“You’re making a joke out of Sheridan Gorman!” the heckler shouted. “Shame on you!”
“My condolences to the family of Sheridan. This is a terrible tragedy,” Johnson said. “And what I’ve said from the very beginning, I’m going to continue to use every single tool that’s available to me to protect the residents of the city of Chicago. And this tragedy is not going to deter us from our work. In fact, it’s going to challenge us all to double down on our efforts to ensure that we are protecting every single individual across neighborhoods.”
The fourth annual “You Name a Snowplow” contest returned in December and yielded 13,300 submissions. The slogan “Abolish ICE,” taking aim at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was submitted around 9,300 times, or about 70% of entries.
The flood of “Abolish ICE” entries followed several tense months in Chicago during which federal immigration agents caravanned around the city making arrests and deploying tear gas and other chemical irritants at protesters. Federal agents fatally shot one man, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, and wounded a woman, Marimar Martinez, in separate incidents.
Protests occurred regularly around the city and at the ICE processing facility in suburban Broadview.
ICE agents were also deployed to airports across the country, including to O’Hare Airport, on Monday amid a partial government shutdown that has left TSA officers working without pay for weeks.
“This name derives from our city’s legacy of standing up for justice, dignity and the rights of all people no matter where they come from,” Johnson said. “I want to take this moment to reiterate that Chicago does not want ICE on our streets, in our airports nor in our city. Chicago believes in abolishing ICE.”
Contributing: Zubaer Khan