Italy Is Not Happy About ICE Agents at the Winter Olympics

Photo: Piero Cruciatti / AFP via Getty Images

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will have a security role at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan, according to the Associated Press. Per the AP’s sources, the agents will be involved in diplomatic security details and are not running immigration-enforcement operations there. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that agents with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit would be “supporting” the U.S. State Department and Italy “to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations.” “All security operations remain under Italian authority,” she added.

This won’t be the first Olympics where ICE has been involved in security efforts for U.S. diplomats, per the AP. But with increasingly violent ICE operations throughout the U.S. — particularly in Minnesota, where two people have been killed at the hands of DHS in the past month alone — Italian officials are not happy. In a Tuesday interview with Italian radio station RTL Radio 102, Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala said that ICE would not be welcome in his city. “This is a militia that kills, a militia that enters into the homes of people, signing their own permission slips. It is clear they are not welcome in Milan, without a doubt,’’ Sala said, per the AP.

Former Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte also spoke out against the prospect of ICE’s presence in the country, writing in a statement on X that Italian leaders “must make clear decisions” to “set our own boundaries.” “After street violence and killings in the USA, we now learn from their spokesperson that ICE agents will come to Italy for security at the Milan-Cortina Olympics. We cannot allow this,” Conte said.

Other officials seem to be downplaying how much ICE will be involved — Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani emphasized in an interview with Italian radio station RAI that the ICE agents coming are “from a specific unit,” per CNN. “It’s not like they’re the ones on the streets of Minneapolis,” Tajani said. “It’s not like the SS are coming.”

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