Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at the Winter Olympics in Italy will “work exclusively in their diplomatic premises”, as Rome sought to quell a growing furore over the agents’ arrival in the European country.
Italy’s interior minister Matteo Piantedosi discussed the matter with US ambassador Tilman Fertitta, a billionaire businessman and friend of President Donald Trump, on Tuesday. The presence of ICE agents among American security personnel during the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Olympics has generated a fierce backlash in Italy amid shock at their tactics used during Trump’s immigration crackdown in the US.
The ministry said late on Tuesday that the ICE personnel dispatched to the event, which starts next Friday, are from the US Department of Homeland Security’s “investigations team” and will be working out of an “operations room” being set up at the US consulate in Milan.