ICE agents at Winter Olympics will only have 'advisory' role, says US envoy to Italy

The US envoy to Rome has said that a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent to Italy for the Winter Olympics will “only have an advisory role”. The clarification comes at a time when outrage over ICE agents deployed in Minnesota has put the Trump administration on the spot.

In Italy, too, the news of ICE agents overseeing the security at the February 6-22 Games in Milan-Cortina has sparked widespread anger. But US ambassador to Italy Tilman J. Fertitta said ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit will be “strictly advisory and intelligence-based, with no patrolling or enforcement involvement.”

“At the Olympics, HSI criminal investigators will contribute their expertise by providing intelligence on transnational criminal threats, with a focus on cybercrimes and national security threats.

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“All security operations will remain the responsibility of Italian authorities,” he said after meeting Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.

Fertitta said the HSI focuses on “cross-border criminal activity, ranging from investigating human smuggling, narcotics trafficking, child exploitation, financial crimes, intellectual property right theft, to recovering stolen art and antiquities”.

Fury in Italy

Lawmakers in Italy had urged Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to block the presence of ICE at the games in the wake of two fatal shootings in Minneapolis.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani moved to ease Italian concerns over the inclusion of ICE agents in the US diplomatic detail, following reports of the agency’s increasingly aggressive tactics at home.

“Let’s be clear: it’s not like they’re coming to maintain public order in the middle of the streets. They’re coming to collaborate in the operations rooms,” Tajani said.

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He added, “It’s not like they’re the ones on the streets of Minneapolis. The problem isn’t that those with machine guns are coming with their faces covered. They’re coming from a specific unit. They’re coming because it’s the unit responsible for counterterrorism.”