The Trump administration has promised Italy that ICE special agents assisting with security for next month’s Olympics will work out of a single room at the U.S. Consulate, following public outcry over the agents’ arrival in the European country.
President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Italy, billionaire Tilman Fertitta, met Tuesday with Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi to try to smooth things over after news broke that agents with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations would be accompanying the U.S. Olympic delegation to the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
Tens of thousands of Italians have signed petitions demanding that ICE not be allowed at the Games, while opposition lawmakers have demanded that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government deny Trump’s “thugs” entry to Italy.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the U.S. ambassador assured Piantedosi that ICE’s analysts would not be working on the ground, the Italian Interior Ministry said in a statement.
“For the Olympics, the U.S. will set up its own operations room at its Milan consulate for representatives of U.S. agencies potentially interested in the event,” the statement said. “Experts from Homeland Security Investigations will also be employed in the room.”
The statement emphasized that HSI was not represented by “operational personnel like those engaged in immigration control in the U.S.”
“They have no responsibilities in Italy and will be primarily responsible for consulting their own databases and providing support to other actors involved,” the statement said.
Italians have been shocked by images of ICE and Border Patrol agents pepper-spraying protesters, breaking into people’s homes, arresting children, and shooting and killing U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37.
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying that, “Obviously, ICE does not conduct immigration enforcement operations in foreign countries.”
But in a country where Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirt squads are still very much a part of the collective memory, many people don’t see much of a distinction between the “operational” and the “investigative” arm of ICE, or of violence committed by ICE versus Border Patrol agents.
“This is a militia that kills. It’s a militia that signs its own permits to enter people’s house, like we signed our own permission slips at school, except it’s much more serious, ” Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said Tuesday during a radio broadcast. “They’re not welcome in Milan. Can’t we just say ‘no’ to Trump for once?”
But deputies for Prime Minister Meloni, who is considered one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, nevertheless tried to draw a distinction between ICE more broadly and HSI.
“It’s not as if the SS are arriving,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told reporters Tuesday at an event for the Day of Remembrance for victims of the Holocaust.
It’s not “people with machine guns with their faces covered,” he continued, but rather, “They’re come because it’s the department responsible for counterterrorism.”
That explanation did not seem to satisfy the public.
On Saturday, protesters in Milan plan to gather and blow whistles in solidarity with anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the event’s organizers announced Wednesday.
The protest will “show the world that the Olympics aren’t just a sporting event, but should also be a great moment for humanity,” Milan’s local Democratic Party secretary Alessandro Capelli wrote in an Instagram post.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
