Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson sparked outrage on Wednesday when he unveiled the city’s new ‘Abolish ICE’ snowplow, just days after an innocent college student was gunned down by an alleged illegal immigrant.
Sheridan Gorman, 18, a freshman at Loyola University, was fatally gunned down in the early morning hours on Thursday while walking with friends near the pier at Loyola Beach.
José Medina-Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan man who illegally entered the country in May 2023, is now facing felony charges of first-degree murder and aggravated use of a firearm for Gorman’s death.
The Department of Homeland Security has also filed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest detainer, hoping to place Medina-Medina in their custody so he could be deported.
Yet on Wednesday, Johnson announced that the term ‘Abolish ICE’ won this year’s snowplow-naming contest following the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, which deployed more than 100 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents to the city to arrest 4,500 illegal aliens.
‘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,’ the mayor said at a news conference.
‘I want to take this moment to reiterate that Chicago does not want ICE on our streets, in our airports nor in our city,’ Johnson continued. ‘Chicago believes in abolishing ICE.’
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson sparked outrage on Wednesday when he unveiled the city’s new ‘Abolish ICE’ snowplow
The announcement came just days after Sheridan Gorman, 18, (left) was fatally shot. José Medina-Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan man who illegally entered the country in May 2023, is now facing felony charges of first-degree murder and aggravated use of a firearm for her death
The winning slogan had been submitted nearly 9,300 times since the fourth-annual ‘You Name a Snowplow’ contest returned in December, accounting for about 70 percent of all entries, he noted.
But the mayor was quickly slammed for the untimely unveiling of the new snowplow, with one heckler even interrupting Johnson’s remarks.
‘You’re making a joke out of Sheridan Gorman. Shame on you!’ the heckler said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
‘ICE would have saved Sheridan Gorman. She would still be alive,’ he continued, before members of the mayor’s security detail and Chicago police escorted the heckler from the premises.
Others also criticized Johnson online, with one X user saying he was a ‘tone-deaf idiot’ as he stood in front of the Abolish ICE snowplow days after Gorman’s death.
‘These people hate you,’ she wrote.
Political correspondent Ryan Dally also called the newly-named snowplow ‘highly offensive,’ while Brandon Straka, the founder of the Walk Away campaign, asked: ‘Is he serious?’
‘Johnson refused to acknowledge how his sanctuary policies led to [Gorman’s] death,’ conservative commentator Paul A Szypula added. ‘And now this.’
The mayor had previously blamed his predecessors for the city’s sanctuary city laws, and argued President Trump ‘refuses to be held accountable’ for his actions, which Johnson said has made cities across the country unsafe.
Johnson declared on Wednesday that Chicago residents do not want Immigration and Customs Enforcement ‘on our streets, in our airports nor in our city.’ ICE agents are pictured walking through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday
Johnson was quickly slammed for his remarks just days after Gorman’s murder
Responding to the backlash on Wednesday, the mayor sent his condolences to the Gorman family, noting that it is ‘a terrible tragedy.’
‘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,’ he said at the news conference in the moments following the heckler’s outburst.
‘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.’
‘What the Trump administration is doing and has done has nothing to do with immigration enforcement or safety. It doesn’t,’ Johnson continued.
‘Ninety-five percent of the individuals that were detained by ICE were not the “worst of the worst” that he said he was going to go after, had no criminal record,’ he claimed.
Johnson’s remarks on Wednesday came after the president said Gorman’s death was ‘devastating.’
‘These people were let in by Biden,’ Trump noted on Monday.
‘We’re getting them out. We’re getting them out fast. That’s why ICE is so important. They’re doing such a good job.’
Gorman’s family has described her as a young woman who ‘lived her faith with kindness, compassion, and joy’ and who ‘loved her family and friends deeply’
Medina-Medina had been apprehended by US Border Patrol on May 9, 2023, but was released into the United States, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Just over a month later, on June 19, 2023, he was arrested in Chicago for allegedly shoplifting $132 worth of merchandise from a Macy’s and was once again released.
Court records show he failed to appear for subsequent hearings, leading a judge to issue a warrant for his arrest. He was never apprehended on that warrant.
Gorman’s family has since said they are upset about the policies that have allowed Medina-Medina to remain in the country.
‘We are gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime,’ the family said in a statement to Fox News.
‘When systems fail – whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act – the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent.’
The family described Gorman as a young woman who ‘lived her faith with kindness, compassion, and joy’ and who ‘loved her family and friends deeply.’
Her family has said they are upset about the policies that allowed Medina-Medina to remain in the country. Sheridan is pictured with her mother Jessica Gorman
Sheridan Gorman, second from right, is pictured smiling in happier times with her friends in Florida last summer. The young woman was murdered on the street in the senseless killing
It remains unclear why Medina-Medina may have opened fire on Gorman, but prosecutors have alleged he was hiding near the pier where Gorman and her friends were walking that morning, ABC 7 reports.
Surveillance footage from multiple cameras then caught the suspect wearing black clothing, a black mask and walking with a ‘distinct limp and slow gait’ from the scene of the shooting to his apartment building.
There, he was allegedly caught on surveillance footage without a mask on while waiting for an elevator.
Those images were then sent to a police database and US Customs and Border Protection identified the suspect as Medina-Medina.
He was taken into custody on Friday at his apartment building in Rogers Park, where authorities allegedly found the clothing he was said to be wearing during the shooting and a .40-caliber handgun that matched shell casings found at the scene.
Medina-Medina is now due to appear in court on Friday for a pretrial detention hearing, after his scheduled hearing on Monday was postponed while he remains in the hospital, where he is being treated for tuberculosis.
