US sending ICE unit to Winter Olympics for security, prompting concern and confusion in Italy

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MILAN (AP) — News that a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be present during the upcoming Winter Games has set off concern and confusion in Italy, where people have expressed outrage at the inclusion of an agency that has dominated headlines for leading the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Homeland Security Investigations, a unit within ICE that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. HSI officers are separate from the ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there was no indication ERO officers were being sent to Italy.

That distinction, however, wasn’t immediately clear to local media on Tuesday morning.

The reaction among some in Italy reflects not only a worsening perception abroad of the administration's tactics on immigration but also underscores a broader rift between the U.S. under President Donald Trump and its international allies.

Vague reports that ICE would be deployed in some capacity surfaced over the weekend, resulting in a series of online petitions gathering support of people opposed to the presence of ICE at the Games. They followed a RAI news report that aired Sunday showing an Italian news crew being threatened in Minneapolis by ICE agents. Trump’s immigration crackdown has in recent weeks intensified in Minneapolis, leading to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said that ICE would not be welcome in his city, which is hosting the Feb. 6 opening ceremony to be attended by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, as well as most ice sports.

“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 told RTL Radio 102.

Italy’s Interior Ministry said later that the HSI investigators would be stationed at a control room at the U.S. Consulate in Milan, in a support role with other U.S. law enforcement agencies, and that they would not include personnel involved in immigration controls in the United States. It noted in a statement issued after Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and U.S. Ambassador Tilman Fertitta met Tuesday morning that HSI agents are present in more than 50 countries, including for many years Italy.

"All of the security operations in the territory remain as always the exclusive responsibility and direction of Italian authorities,'' the ministry said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is broken into various arms. Enforcement and Removal Operations is the part of the agency that is tasked with monitoring, arresting and removing foreigners who no longer have the right to be in the U.S. They’re the officers most directly tasked with carrying out Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Another arm of ICE is Homeland Security Investigations. Agents from HSI conduct investigations into anything that has a cross-border nexus from human smuggling to fentanyl trafficking to smuggling of cultural artifacts. Agents from HSI are stationed in embassies around the world to facilitate their investigations and build relations with local law enforcement in those countries.

The ICE agents deployed to Italy for the Games will have a different role from the one seen in immigration crackdowns in the U.S., officials have stressed.

“Obviously, ICE does not conduct immigration enforcement operations in foreign countries,″ the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Tuesday.

“At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is supporting the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and host nation to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations. All security operations remain under Italian authority.”

A U.S official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss security measures said the general public likely wouldn’t even see or be aware of the HSI agents on the ground during the Olympics. The official said HSI agents would be working behind the scenes, mainly in offices or the U.S. consulate in Milan, as they have done during previous international events.

For years HSI distanced itself from anything having to do with deportations or immigration enforcement. At one point they got new branding and email addresses to set themselves apart because agents working in parts of the country with strong political opposition to immigration enforcement wouldn’t get their emails answered because they had an ICE.gov address.

Under the Trump administration, however, HSI agents have been working closer with ICE’s other arm — the deportation officers — to focus more on immigration issues. They’ve been going out on operations with deportation officers and focusing more on immigration fraud cases.

The International Olympic Committee underlined in a statement that security “is the responsibility of the authorities of the host country, who work closely with the participating delegations.”

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said that it works with the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service, the IOC and the host nation for security planning, ”but not with U.S. domestic law enforcement or immigration agencies.''

The reaction in Italy highlights increasingly fraught relations between Trump and the U.S.' traditional allies in Europe, which have been tested during the president's second term over his threats to take over Greenland.

Piantedosi presided over a meeting of law enforcement and intelligence services on Tuesday to discuss security for the Games. More than 6,000 police and other agents will be deployed to secure what is billed as the most spread out Games in Olympic history, involving seven towns and cities spread across a broad swath of northern Italy from Milan to the Austrian border.

The Interior Minister is Italy’s top law enforcement official, charged with security for the Games, which is coordinated with regional prefects.

Asked about the potential deployment over the weekend, he gave a diplomatic shrug: “I don’t see what the problem would be,″ the news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.

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Barry reported from Milan. Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Matthew Lee contributed from Washington and Graham Dunbar from Crans-Montana, Switzerland and Eddie Pells in Denver, Colorado.