‘Abolish ICE’ submitted 9,200 times for snow plough naming contest
When people in the UK were given the chance to name a boat, they came up with ‘Boaty McBoatface’.
But when Chicagoans were given the chance to give a snowplough a name, they got slightly more topical.
More than 9,200 people in the Illinois capital have voted to name a snowplough ‘Abolish ICE’.
This amounts to 70% of the 13,300 submissions made so far, Block Club Chicago reported, citing obtained records.
Other names that could soon be printed on the sides of snow ploughs include ‘ICE Breaker’, ‘ICE Be Gone’ and ‘No More Mr ICE Guy’.
But while it might seem that people in Chicago just really hate ice-covered roads, it’s not quite that.
In the US, ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency which has been at the centre of a firestorm of criticism this month.
An immigration officer shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, in Minnesota on January 7 during an anti-ICE protest.
The agency drew further heat when agents were photographed detaining a five-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man bag and an oversized hat.
Only days later, federal immigration agents belonging to Border Force killed ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti.
These incidents all come as Donald Trump has increasingly stepped up immigration raids in the US, including in Chicago.
More than six in 10 Chicagoans oppose ICE’s presence in the city, largely seeing it as a negative, according to a recent poll.
Nearly eight in 10 told the pollster Chicago Speaks that immigration agents have made immigrant families feel less safe.
In October, people in the city were repeatedly filmed honking their horns and shouting ‘fascist’ as ICE agents patrolled the streets.
Mayor Brandon Johnson announced the city’s fourth annual snowplough naming contest in December.
Less than 40 minutes later, Chicago’s self-proclaimed ‘rat czar’, Bebo, shared a screenshot of their submission: ‘ABOLISH ICE.’
Bebo added: ‘Everyone else go home — this is the year we secure ABOLISH ICE on a Chicago Snowplow.’
Johnson, an outspoken critic of the sweeps, replied to the user the following day with an emoji of a wide-open pair of eyes.
He later told PolitcsNation that the idea has his ‘complete endorsement’, having previously described ICE as a ‘privatised force to enact terror’
Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino attempted to hit back at the mayor on X, writing: ‘Name the plow “Reality Check” and paint it green while your at it. Johnson obsesses over Border Patrol it seems!!’
The mayor, it seems, wasn’t too fussed about Bovino’s opinion.
‘Reality check, Greg: Chicagoans vote on the snow plow names. The same people who want you out of our city,’ he said.
Submissions for the city’s fourth annual snowplough naming contest closed on January 10.
Residents will be able to vote for their favourite out of the top 25 from February 1 to February 14. The top six will each get a snowplough.
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