“Did you hear the news, Jess?”, my friend asked me. “There will be ICE at the Winter Olympics.”
At first, it sounded like a bad joke. Call me grumpy, but even with my dark sense of humour, I found it difficult to laugh at jokes involving an agency that put a five-year-old child in custody, dragged a disabled woman from her car, and that shoots innocent people in broad daylight.
So when I heard that ICE would be attending the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, I was shocked, but not surprised. Shocked because of the scale of what had already transpired, including the recent killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol, an agency closely affiliated with ICE. That Pretti was of Northern Italian descent made the decision feel all the more unsettling.
Unsurprised because of the increasingly cosy relationship between Giorgia Meloni’s government and the US.
Asked about the backlash, the foreign minister Antonio Tajani responded: “I don’t understand – it’s not like the SS are coming.”
The officers coming to Milan belong to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the main investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Their role during the games is to provide protection for the US secretary of state Marco Rubio and vice president JD Vance, who both arrived in Milan ahead of the inauguration ceremony.
That clarification, however, has done little to calm public anger.
A week before the opening, Milanese residents took to Piazza XXV Aprile, just outside the city centre. Having attended the Bezos protests in Venice last year, I went to see whether the atmosphere (and the signs) lived up to expectations.
Several thousand protestors had gathered. Some had painted their faces with “ICE out”. Others held placards reading “ICE should be in my drinks, not my city”.
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“They think after all they have done, they can show up here and not expect us to be annoyed,” said Vittoria Rossi, from Milan. “I feel ashamed that we have a government that would even allow this. Thankfully humanity is here today.”
“It’s everything bad that could be thought of,” said Maso Notarianni, president of Milan’s ARCI branch, a national non-profit cultural association.
“I understand perfectly well that every nation thinks about its own security. But at the moment, ICE is essentially a force that tramples over the law. It deports people, shoots people in the head, terrorises them.”
“I find their behavior completely inappropriate. The fact that they come here after having already destroyed people’s lives. But honestly, I don’t think this is the right moment for their arrival.”
When the inauguration ceremony took place, JD Vance and his wife, Usha, were booed loudly, the jeers audible above the music. US Olympic athletes have also spoken publicly about the political situation back home.
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Protests continued across Milan over the weekend after the opening, with demonstrators throwing stones and flares at police. While ICE remains a central target, opposition has broadened to include anger over the environmental impact of the games themselves.
Italy is also now set to open an investigation into Saturday’s railway sabotage at Bologna Centrale station, which caused major disruption for thousands of passengers during the opening weekend of the games.
The Olympics are promoted as an event that brings the world together. These games suggest the opposite. Rather than neutral ground, the games have become a political stage.
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