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.
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 saw as creeping fascism in the United States.
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.
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.
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.
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
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