The Trump administration is secretly planning to deploy ICE agents to the Winter Olympics in Italy next month—and Italian lawmakers are demanding that these “thugs” be denied entry to their country entirely.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed to the Daily Beast that ICE will be “supporting” security operations at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics, which run from February 6 to March 15.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin insisted ICE won’t conduct “immigration enforcement operations” in Italy—just “vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations.”
THE DETAILS: The Italian government’s response has been a masterclass in chaos. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s conservative government first denied knowing anything about ICE’s involvement.
Then Attilio Fontana, president of the Lombardy region, confirmed ICE would be part of Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s security team for the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium. Then his office released a statement saying he was speaking “hypothetically.” Then Italy’s Interior Ministry denied any collaboration agreements had been signed.
Make it make sense.
WHY IT MATTERS: This announcement comes as ICE’s reputation is in freefall—even by its own already-basement-level standards.
In recent weeks, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three. A Border Patrol officer killed Alex Pretti, also 37, a Veterans Affairs nurse. ICE has been caught breaking into homes without warrants, stopping off-duty police officers of color, and—not a typo—arresting a 5-year-old boy.
And just days ago, ICE agents reportedly threatened an Italian journalist with the state broadcaster RAI who was filming a segment in Minneapolis.
BUT BUT BUT: Italian lawmakers aren’t buying the administration’s assurances that ICE will behave. Thousands have signed a Change.org petition demanding ICE agents be denied entry to the Olympics.
“ICE is an unprepared, violent, and out-of-control militia,” Italian Senator Carlo Calenda wrote on Facebook. “It must not set foot in Italy.”
Nicola Fratoianni, a progressive member of Italy’s House of Deputies, was even more direct: “We cannot allow heavily armed murderers, who have also threatened Italian journalists, to act as law enforcement on Italian soil, without knowing how and where they should operate, with what powers or jurisdiction.”
Italian Senator Francesco Boccia of the center-left Democratic Party called the prospect “disturbing.”
BOTTOM LINE: The Trump administration is exporting its brutal immigration enforcement apparatus to an international sporting event meant to celebrate global unity. ICE agents who’ve killed American citizens on American soil are now being sent abroad to provide “security”—and Italy’s government can’t even keep its story straight about whether they agreed to it.
The world is watching, and what they’re seeing is an agency that’s become synonymous with lawlessness being deployed on foreign soil while Italian lawmakers call them exactly what they are: thugs.