The presence of federal ICE agents on a mission to support the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics sparked an outcry in Italy, including petitions against their presence in the country that gathered tens of thousands of signatures, in light of the violent operations of ICE agents in the USA.
The Italian Government guaranteed today in Parliament that US federal agents from the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) on a mission to will not carry out any “operational activities” on Italian territory.
“ICE does not and cannot carry out operational police activities in our national territory. Security and public order are guaranteed exclusively by our police forces […] We will not see anything on the national territory that is comparable to what was seen in the United States,” said Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
At a hearing in the chamber of deputies to explain the presence of members of the controversial police force on Italian territory for the Winter Games, which begin on Friday, and with several opposition deputies wearing badges with the inscription “ICE Out”, the minister insisted that “the members of this agency will only be involved in analytical activities and the exchange of information with the Italian authorities during the Milan-Cortina Games”.
According to the Minister of the Interior of the right-wing and far-right Government led by Giorgia Meloni, this is “a completely unfounded controversy”, as the US federal agents deployed to Milan-Cortina belong to the internal security service responsible for analyzing the fight against terrorism and international crime, and not to the unit responsible for the fight against immigration, whose methods have sparked numerous protests in the United States.
Piantedosi recalled that the collaboration of the Italian authorities with ICE goes back more than ten years, due to a police cooperation agreement signed between the two countries in 2009 and ratified in 2014, “as has been the case for years in more than 50 countries, without anyone ever being scandalized”, stressing that it “has already proven to be particularly fruitful” in combating cross-border crime.
The parliamentary leader of the main opposition party, the Democratic Party (PD, center-left), pointed out that times have changed, noting that, “ten years ago, the United States would never have thought of invading Greenland or applying customs tariffs”, and recalled “the two defenseless citizens murdered [pelo ICE em Minneapolis]Renée Good and Alex Pretti, which was not a tragic mistake, but an accurate political choice” by President Donald Trump.
“It is the legitimization of State violence, a State that claims to be democratic and uses children as bait. Generalized State violence, the result of a precise strategy. In this context, the Italian Government should have been alarmed by the possible presence of ICE, but instead, it limited itself to uttering embarrassing words and ambiguous and contradictory responses”, deplored Chiara Braga.
ICE’s presence at the Winter Games triggers a wave of protest
The presence of federal ICE agents in a mission to support the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, revealed last week, sparked an outcry in Italy, including petitions against their presence in the country that gathered tens of thousands of signatures, in light of the violent operations of ICE agents in the United States.
One of the first figures to express outrage was the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala (supported by the center-left coalition), who spoke out unequivocally against the presence in the city of “a militia that kills”.
The Italian authorities initially denied the presence of ICE agents, then tried to minimize the role of the United States police force, suggesting that they only guarantee the security of the American delegation, as the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, will be present at the opening ceremony of the Winter Games, which take place between February 6th and 22nd.
