On Jan. 27, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, Italy to provide security for U.S. delegates. The move sparked protests in Milan against ICE’s presence in the city, and it has placed the U.S.’s already controversial immigration policies under further scrutiny on an international stage.
The deployment is an extension of U.S. President Donald Trump’s heightened use of ICE as part of a national immigration crackdown. During his second presidential campaign, Trump promised to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history at a rally in Reno, Nevada on Oct. 25, 2023. Keeping his promise, Trump, throughout 2025, began enforcement operations in major U.S. cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Following the homicides of Renée Good and Alex Pretti — both American citizens — by ICE in January 2026, already-active discontent with the agency has intensified nationwide. Now, with ICE’s deployment to one of the biggest sporting events in the world, that discontent has spread onto the international scene.
Although U.S. security presence is common at international events such as the Olympics, Trump’s deployment of ICE to Milano Cortina is unprecedented, as Whitman Professor of Politics Aaron Strain explained in an email to The Wire.
“HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] won’t be involved in immigration enforcement in Italy,” Strain said. “It sounds more like the type of background security that they’ve always done in the past. But now that ICE is strongly associated with political violence, repression of dissent, kidnapping toddlers and arresting immigrants without criminal records, it’s easy to understand why people don’t trust them to stick to security.”
Strain explained that there are two subdivisions within ICE: Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). HSI is designed to focus on investigating sex trafficking, smuggling, nuclear materials and drugs. It also supports agencies such as the Secret Service and the State Department to provide security for events, commonly working outside the U.S. ERO, which is meant to participate in immigration enforcement.
Under the Trump administration, HSI’s work has been made into, what Strain called, the president’s “personal political police.”
“A year ago, the White House began prioritizing meeting mass deportation quotas above all other ICE activities,” Strain said. “Since then, HSI agents have been away from investigating serious transnational crimes and sent to participate in immigrant sweeps. So HSI is now fully part of the enforcement activities that are so unpopular within the U.S., where 65% of Americans disapprove of the agency.”
In a similar show of disapproval in the week leading up to the Olympics, several hundred protestors walked the streets of Milan in opposition to ICE’s presence within Italy and against their actions in the U.S.
“It is a violent, unprepared and out-of-control militia,” Carlo Calenda, a veteran politician, told RTL 102.5 in a recent appearance on the Italian radio station.
Strain explained that the deployment of ICE to the Olympics has only added fuel to the fire that is international perceptions of the current Trump administration.
“Italy has its own deep history of racist, anti-immigrant movements,” Strain said. “But Trump is extremely unpopular in Europe, where he’s overwhelmingly seen as a threat to peace, security and prosperity. So ICE-HSI’s presence at an event like the Olympics doesn’t feel like a normal thing anymore.”
In order to mollify protesters, Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, attempted to clear up the controversy, stating that the ICE agents stationed in Milano Cortina were unlike the immigration squads responsible for the recent violence in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“It’s not like these are the [ICE] people on the streets of Minneapolis,” Tajani told the Italian magazine L’Espresso.
Despite the statement, protests in Milano Cortina, Italy continue to flare up and tension remains high. As of Feb. 7, 2026, larger peaceful protests against ICE have unfolded in city streets; confrontations between smaller groups of protesters and police have resulted in violence. The Winter Olympics continues amid this backdrop.
