Demonstrators in Milan protest ICE unit at Winter Olympics

MILAN (AP) — Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Milan to protest the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the upcoming Winter Olympics, unbothered by the fact that agents would be stationed in a control room and not operating on the streets.

The protest in Piazza XXV Aprile, a square named for the date of Italy’s liberation from Nazi fascism in 1945, drew people from the left-leaning Democratic Party, the CGIL trade union confederation and the ANPI organizations that protect the memory of Italy’s partisan resistance during World War II, along with many other people.

Organizers handed out plastic whistles, which participants blew as music blared from a van. The protest was as much against the news that agents from a division of ICE would participate in security for the U.S. delegation as against what many of those present said they saw as creeping fascism in the United States.

“No thank you, from Minnesota to the world, at the side of anyone who fights for human rights,’’ read one banner. “Never again means never again for anyone,’’ read another, and “Ice only in Spritz,’’ a reference to a popular aperitif, read yet another.

The ICE agents to be deployed to Milan are not from the same unit as the immigration agents cracking down in Minnesota and other U.S. cities.

News of the deployment of ICE agents has provoked a backlash in Italy. Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala has said they were not welcome. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has been called to Parliament to testify about the deployment this week.

Protester Silvana Grassi held a sign that read “Ice = Gestapo.” She said the scenes of ICE agents in Minneapolis shooting and killing protesters and detaining children were deeply upsetting.

“It makes me want to cry to think of it,’’ Grassi said. “It’s too terrible. How did they elect such a terrible, evil man?’’

Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the U.S. is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.

“Even if it’s not the same ones, we don’t want them here,’’ Grassi said.

Paolo Bortoletto, also holding a banner, was aware that the officers would have an investigative and not a street role.

Still, he said, “We don’t want them in our country. We are a peaceful country. We don’t want fascists. It’s their ideas that bother us."

The Olympics begin Feb. 6 with an opening ceremony that will be attended by U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.