'Abolish ICE' gets early nod from Mayor Brandon Johnson in annual Chicago snowplow contest

Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune on Dec 26, 2025

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CHICAGO — Chicago’s annual snowplow-naming contest launched this month, and Mayor Brandon Johnson is already teasing an early favorite: “Abolish ICE.”

After opening applications for the city’s fourth “You Name a Snowplow” competition, the progressive mayor’s X account gave a public endorsement to someone submitting a phrase commonly associated with the movement to dismantle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The account @BebopOtt posted a screenshot with his entry and wrote, “Everyone else go home — this is the year we secure ABOLISH ICE on a Chicago Snowplow.”

The following day, the mayor’s X account reposted that submission with an emoji of intrigued eyes. It was a tacit nod to the local sentiment against President Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz, which for months besieged the Chicago area’s immigrant communities with widespread deportation raids. But according to Johnson’s press team, there’s nothing political about that slogan.

“this IS a fun, light-hearted and nonpolitical,” the account who entered “ABOLISH ICE” as a submission wrote in one reply to a naysayer. “not sure why you’re trying to bring politics into it — i am merely stating an objective fact that snowplows ‘abolish ice.’”

The mayor’s press account affirmed, “True.” This week, Johnson’s team shared more links to news outlets drawing attention to that submission.

Entries for snowplow names close Jan. 10. At the end of the two-phase contest, residents will pick the top six names. Previous winners have included “Salter Payton,” “Jean Baptiste Point du Shovel” and “Lollaplowlooza.”

Though abolishing the federal agency handling immigration enforcement entirely started as a left-wing battle cry, the Trump administration’s deportation campaign has remained widely unpopular in Chicago. That operation began in September and wound down after over two months, but Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino and more than 100 masked federal agents returned to Chicago briefly last week.

A trained-and-tested apparatus of rapid responders quickly met them with whistles and smartphone cameras.

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