Amid protests over ICE’s presence at the Olympics, will American athletes get booed?

MILAN — Many of the officials backing the nearly 250 U.S. athletes competing in this month’s Winter Olympics arrived in Italy last weekend to a welcome they least expected: Hundreds of demonstrators filled a square in central Milan to protest the reported plan to deploy U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the Games.

The first events of the 18-day competition, which will be shared by Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Alps, will start on Thursday and the opening ceremony will be held on Friday. Against this backdrop, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry described the managers’ involvement as “distracting” and “regrettable”.

“This is a militia that kills. They are not welcome in Milan,” Mayor Giuseppe Sala said on local radio before the protests took place under the neoclassical Porta Garibaldi arch in Piazza XXV Aprile, named after the date of Italy’s liberation from Nazi fascism in World War II.

Many demonstrators blew whistles and held banners bearing the words “No ice in Milan” and the five Olympic rings used as handcuffs. One woman was holding a handmade poster with photos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two Minnesotans killed by federal agents last month, and Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy in a blue bunny hat who was taken from his home in Minneapolis to a detention facility in Texas.

“All the videos are public and everyone can see what’s going on,” 18-year-old protester Bruna Scanziani told reporters. “The perception of America has changed”

Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed to the Athletic the presence of ICE agents in Italy, leaving her department, the U.S. Consulate and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to defuse the controversy.

DHS said the agents sent to Milan were not immigration agents but came from a unit known as Homeland Security Investigations, which specializes in cross-border crimes. They usually provide intelligence and security at major sporting events both in the United States and abroad, but in Milan their role will be strictly advisory and intelligence-based, Ambassador Tilman J. Fertitta said.

Travelers pass through the lobby of Milan Linate Airport M4 Metroline train station on Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said it was working with the Diplomatic Security Service, which is under the State Department, unlike ICE, which is part of Homeland Security. The Diplomatic Security Service has provided security for U.S. delegations at every Olympics since 1992.

“USOPC is not working with U.S. domestic law enforcement or immigration agencies, including agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, commonly referred to as ICE, in the planning or conduct of the Games,” the committee said in a statement. “Italian authorities are solely responsible for all security operations at the Games.”

Despite the tensions, in the days leading up to the Games there was little sign of the heavy security presence that marked the Paris Olympics 17 months ago. At Linate Airport, the closest of Milan’s three airports to the city centre, two Italian soldiers dressed in camouflage stood in front of the arrival gates with long guns on Monday evening. They left on Tuesday afternoon.

Five miles away, in Piazza del Duomo, the cultural and social heart of Milan, two pairs of soldiers stood on either side of the massive square; He ignored the hundreds of international tourists gathered under the white awnings on either side of the pop-up Olympic souvenir tent, holding up their phones to snap photos of the ancient Gothic cathedral that gave the square its name.

A building in the heart of Piazza del Doumo is lit up with animated Olympic competitors on Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

On the street where tram tracks snake in front of the popular shops and restaurants that line busy Via Orefici, groups of city police and the Carabinieri, the national police known for their black uniforms designed by Giorgio Armani, were joking among themselves. They were much less threatening than the mobile patrols of soldiers and police officers that were ubiquitous in France.

A local woman shrugged at the officers’ presence.

“As it is the iconic and most touristic place in Milan, there are always lots of police and soldiers,” he said.

It’s unclear how American athletes will be received at Friday’s opening ceremony, where Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are expected to attend.

“Their flags, their tracksuits, and being declared the United States is definitely an opportunity for the audience to make their feelings about the United States known,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a sports and international relations expert who studies Middle East studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

Europeans have strong feelings about the US right now; Those sentiments are encouraged by more than just the images of ICE agents dominating TV news and filling social media feeds for months in Italy and beyond. Over the past few months, President Trump has sent forces into Venezuela to oust its president, threatened military action against Iran, opened fire on alleged drug ships in the Caribbean and Pacific, and called Europe “rotting” and its leaders “weak.”

Demonstrators in Milan held signs protesting ICE on Saturday in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis.

(Alessandro Bremec / Associated Press)

“If it weren’t for us, you’d all be speaking German,” he said in a combative speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

But amid the chaos, what upset the continent most was Trump’s insistence that the United States take control of Greenland from Denmark, a staunch ally of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and warned the Danes and seven other countries they would face 25% tariffs if they did not relent. Most far-right parties in Europe, whose members generally support Trump, now see the US president as “the enemy of Europe”, according to a survey published by Paris-based platform Le Grand Continent.

As a result of the blowback, Trump backed away from the tariff threat and said he would not seize control of Greenland by force, but the effects of tensions remain.

Coates Ulrichsen, who was born in Greece to British and Norwegian parents, said: “Greenland in particular has been really frustrating. It’s unfortunate as we approach the Olympics.”

That makes the U.S. team and its 232 athletes, the largest group at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, a convenient foil to Europe’s wrath.

“The national team is the symbol of the nation. This makes it a target for any potential political frustration,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “This won’t be the first time.”

For example, the US team was openly booed during the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, which began 17 months after the United States invaded Iraq.

“The Olympics were no stranger to politics,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “And of course the key element [of athletes] “Coming out from behind a flag is a very easy target in a way.”

Some Italians aren’t so sure.

“My personal opinion is that U.S. athletes will not be the target of protests,” said one woman, who asked that her name not be used because she works with many international clients, some in the United States. “This is more of a political issue.”

He also said that the attitude of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is among the European leaders most supportive of President Trump, has blunted public opposition to the United States.

Olympic Rings ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina on Tuesday.

(Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images)

As this month’s Games, the first Winter Olympics to officially feature co-hosting cities, will be spread across four clusters covering about 8,500 square miles in northern Italy, there will be four opening ceremonies on Friday, with the main ceremony to be held at the San Siro Olympic Stadium in Milan starting at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Smaller events will be held simultaneously in the mountain venues of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Valtellina and Val di Fiemme.

Bobsledder Azaria Hill, a first-time Olympian whose mother, father and aunt competed in the Summer Games, said walking in the opening ceremony has long been a dream of hers. And he doesn’t think politics will spoil that Friday.

“The Olympics bring all nations together,” he said. “That’s one of the special things about the Olympics, and you really see that in unity. I think everything will be okay.”

The governing bodies of three US winter sports – figure skating, speed skating and hockey – have renamed their accommodations in Milan the Winter House in a bid to distinguish athletes from politicians.

They had planned to call it the Ice House.