MILAN’S mayor has denounced plans for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to have a security role at the upcoming Winter Olympics, describing the federal officers as a ‘militia that kills’.
Confirmation of the deployment to the Milano-Cortina Games, which begin next week, sparked immediate anger.
Milan’s Mayor Giuseppe Sala said on Tuesday that the ICE agents are ‘not welcome’ at the Winter Olympics.
‘This is a militia that kills,’ Sala said. ‘It is a militia that enters people’s homes by signing permits for themselves. It is clear they are not welcome in Milan, without a doubt.’
The mayor also questioned Italy’s ability to resist US pressure. ‘Can we say no to Trump, just for once?’ he asked.
‘ICE officers shouldn’t come to Italy because they are not aligned with our democratic way of managing security. We can take care of our security ourselves.’
Alessandro Zan, a member of the European Parliament for Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party, called ICE ‘Trump’s private police force’ and condemned its deployment as ‘unacceptable’.
He wrote on X that in Italy: ‘We don’t want those who trample on human rights and act outside of any democratic control.’
Meanwhile, Minnesota’s top federal judge has ordered the ICE director to appear in his courtroom.
In a sharply worded order, US District Judge Patrick J Schiltz directed Todd Lyons – acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency – to appear on Friday and explain why he should not be held in contempt.
The judge said Lyons’ agency has repeatedly failed to comply with court orders to hold hearings for detained immigrants.
‘The court’s patience is at an end,’ wrote Schlitz, who acknowledged that he was taking an ‘extraordinary’ step in ordering the head of a federal agency to appear.
‘But the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed.
‘This Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result,’ the judge wrote.