The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place from February 6th to 22nd. image: AP
Rome has explained what the role of the US Immigration Service (ICE) will be during the Milan-Cortina Olympics. The authorities assure that these officials “will never set foot on Italian soil.”
January 28, 2026, 6:19 p.mJanuary 28, 2026, 6:19 p.m
The announcement that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials would be present at the Milan-Cortina Olympics caused a stir. The information disseminated by the press and the inaccurate statements made by some Italian politicians, now refuted, suggested that the militia currently deployed in Minneapolis would patrol the Olympic venues.
After a few days of confusion, the Italian authorities spoke out. The Interior Ministry first confirmed what ICE representatives had told the media the day before: The officers involved in the Olympics are not part of the agency’s operational division, which is responsible for arrests, but rather of the investigative division, which is referred to as the “Homeland Security Investigations Branch” (HSI).
These are officials who “specialize in investigations,” as the Italian Interior Ministry specified in a statement published on Tuesday. And it continues:
“These analysts will work exclusively within their diplomatic offices and will not operate on Italian territory.”
The Italian Ministry of the Interior
Specifically, the officers will work in an “operations room” set up by the United States in the US Consulate in Milan, the ministry said. They will be supported by “representatives of other authorities who may be interested in the event”.
translation
This text was written by our colleagues from French-speaking Switzerland and we translated it for you.
A dozen analysts
According to several Italian media outlets, around a dozen HSI officials will be involved in the Olympics. They will have “no authority on Italian territory” and will be “mainly entrusted with consulting their own databases and supporting other actors involved,” the ministry adds.
Their tasks are therefore limited to “risk analysis and the exchange of information with the Italian police forces,” emphasizes Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi on X.
“The ICE officers will never patrol the Italian streets,” he assures. “And that for a simple reason,” he continues:
“Police activities in Italy, even if they require the cooperation of other countries, as is the case at major events, may only be carried out by our own security forces.”
Matteo Piantedosi
Finally, the Ministry of the Interior reminds that Home Security Investigation investigators have been present in more than 50 countries, including Italy, for several years. “They do not carry out any operational operations or immigration controls in other countries,” it is emphasized. (asi)
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