Due to the threat of climate change and rising temperatures, many are worried whether there will be enough ice for the events at the ongoing Winter Olympics in Milan. The US Department of Homeland Security seems to have misunderstood the shortage, as tensions rise over the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Italy for the international games.
Reports of ICE operations expanding past US borders have caused outrage worldwide and particularly in Milan, where protesters have taken to the streets with ‘ICE OUT’ banners.
The reports of American officers on the grounds at the Olympics follow 12 months of increased domestic freedoms granted to the department, culminating in large scale operations in cities like Chicago and Minnesota. Many in the United States and among the international community have spoken out against these special operations due to their use of violence and legal ambiguity. These operations have not only led to the removal of legal migrants, such as US veteran Sae Joon Park, but also led to the deaths of US citizens — the most public cases being the recent killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti after altercations with ICE agents.
The officers being sent to Italy are part of the Homeland Security Investigations component of ICE, an organisation with a long history of operating abroad to aid countries with counter-terrorism capacity. While overseas, these units act under local authorities and are only deployed with the consent of the host countries.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, has stated that ICE agents would “obviously” not be conducting immigration enforcement operations in Italy and that they would act purely as support for local law enforcement authorities.
While the earlier deployments of the HSI have never seen much backlash, recent actions by American federal agents have made their presence in the Olympic Village intolerable as the Mayor of Milan called ICE “a militia that kills” on Italian radio last week.
Attempts to avoid controversy have even affected Olympics nomenclature. While it is impossible to completely remove the word ‘ice’ from a Winter Olympics, the US athlete hospitality space has been renamed from the ‘Ice House’ to the ‘Winter House’.
Despite the marginal role the federal agents will likely have in Milan, the division and anxiety caused by their presence have no place at the Winter Olympics and the normalisation of their presence can be construed as passive support for the organisation itself. The Trump administration has spent the last year alienating vast swathes of the American population and has used ICE aggressively to get states in line with federal policy. Just as Trump needs to stay out of Europe, so must ICE. The Olympic emphasis on “greatness together” has a hard time ringing true when the fear of violence and unrest looms right behind the snowy mountains.
Illustration by Sal Mulvihill for The Student.