The Olympics are supposed to be neutral ground.
I'm writing this from my apartment in Tirana, Albania, where January winds rattle the old windows and my coffee has gone cold. The news scrolling across my screen feels like it belongs to a strange parallel world. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents—ICE—will reportedly have a security role at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, which begin February 6th. The immediate question that hits me, sitting in my wheelchair with my physics textbooks stacked beside me, is simple: why?
I run a small science and cultural group here called Free Astroscience. We talk about the cosmos, host public lectures, and try to make astronomy accessible to people who've never held a telescope. We're not political. But this story grabbed me by the throat because it exposes something about power, boundaries, and the strange ways nations flex their muscles on the world stage.
What Exactly Is Happening?
Let me simplify this for anyone who, like me, finds American federal agencies a bit confusing.
ICE is a domestic U.S. agency. It handles immigration enforcement and customs matters inside American borders. That's its job. But according to multiple reports from Associated Press and confirmed by U.S. Embassy sources in Rome, a unit of ICE called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) will be present at the Winter Olympics in Italy. The stated reason? To support the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service and help assess risks related to cross-border criminal organisations.
On paper, that sounds reasonable. Countries protect their diplomats at international events. The U.S. has sent various federal agencies to previous Olympics—this isn't brand new.
So what's different this time?
The Blood Still Fresh in Minneapolis
Context matters. And the context here is Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On January 7th, 2026, a 37-year-old American woman named Renée Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. She was a writer, a poet, a mother of three. Seventeen days later, on January 24th, a 37-year-old ICU nurse named Alex Pretti was shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents in the same city. He was filming the agents with his phone. He was licensed to carry a firearm, which he didn't appear to draw. Both were American citizens.
I'm not simplifying this for dramatic effect. I'm simplifying it because that's what the videos show. Tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis in sub-zero temperatures after these deaths. The Border Patrol commander called the victims "suspects." A DHS official claimed Pretti intended to "massacre" federal agents—a claim that bystander footage directly contradicts.
This is the agency now sending officers to protect American diplomats at a global celebration of sportsmanship.
Milan's Mayor Isn't Impressed
Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, didn't mince words. Speaking to Italian radio on Tuesday, he called ICE "a militia that kills."
"It's a militia that enters people's homes by signing permits for themselves," he said. "It's clear that they're not welcome in Milan, there's no doubt about that."
The smell of espresso drifting through Milan's piazzas will soon mix with the buzz of over 6,000 Italian police officers securing the most geographically spread-out Olympics in history—seven cities, from Milan to the Austrian border. Sala's question hangs in the cold Alpine air: "Could we ever say no to Trump?"
The Confusion Inside Italy
Here's where it gets even stranger.
Italian authorities initially denied any agreement with ICE. An Interior Ministry branch stated that no ICE presence had been confirmed and that security arrangements for the U.S. delegation hadn't even been finalised. The International Olympic Committee said Games security is the responsibility of the host country. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said reports that ICE would provide security for American athletes were "not true."
Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are confirmed to attend the Opening Ceremony. So somebody needs to protect them. But Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani offered a curious reassurance: "It's not as if the SS are arriving."
I found myself re-reading that sentence three times. When your defence of an agency requires clarifying that they're not comparable to the Nazi secret police, something has gone very wrong in the messaging department.
A View from the Balkans
Here in Albania, we've had our own complicated history with state security forces. My grandparents lived under one of the most isolated communist regimes in Europe. The Sigurimi—our secret police—infiltrated every aspect of daily life. When I read about agencies expanding their roles, operating outside their mandated territories, and escaping independent oversight, my skin prickles with inherited memory.
I don't draw easy equivalences. History doesn't repeat itself with such neatness. But patterns rhyme.
What I see unfolding is this: an American domestic agency, fresh from killing two citizens on home soil without facing meaningful investigation, is being normalised into international security operations. HSI officers will reportedly work behind the scenes, in offices and the U.S. consulate. The general public won't see them. That's the point.
Normalisation doesn't happen with fireworks. It happens quietly, in back offices, with bureaucratic statements that sound reasonable until you examine them closely.
The Real Question
The real question isn't whether HSI has attended previous Olympics. It has. The real question isn't whether protecting diplomats is legitimate. It is.
The real question is: what is ICE becoming?
According to DHS.gov, ICE's membership has grown dramatically this year. Reports suggest a 220% increase. The agency that once focused on border enforcement is being deployed to domestic protests, conducting operations that have killed American citizens, and now providing security at international sporting events.
One Reddit commenter summed it up with dark humour: "Would be funny if they get arrested." Another quipped: "Would be double funny if Italian customs absolutely messed with them. Imagine an advance security team gets deported due to improperly shipping firearms."
The jokes write themselves because the reality is absurd.
What the Stars Teach Us
I spend most of my time thinking about galaxies, about the cold equations that govern planetary motion, about the light that travels billions of years to reach our eyes. Physics teaches patience. The universe operates on timescales that make human politics feel microscopic.
But I'm also a young man in a wheelchair in a small Balkan capital, and I know that microscopic things matter. A single photon can trigger a chemical cascade. A single decision can reshape an institution. The expansion of any security force's mandate—anywhere in the world—deserves scrutiny.
The Milan-Cortina Olympics should be about athletes gliding across ice, about the roar of crowds, about nations putting aside their differences for two weeks. It shouldn't be about which American federal agency gets to flex its muscles on Italian soil.
A Final Thought
Trade unions in Italy are planning an "ICE OUT" rally in central Milan before the Games begin. Online petitions are circulating. The centre-left Democratic Party MEP Alessandro Zan called the situation "unacceptable." Even members of the centrist Italia Viva party say ICE agents don't represent Italian values.
From Tirana, watching all this unfold, I keep returning to Mayor Sala's question: Could we ever say no to Trump?
The answer, I think, depends on whether citizens—Italian, American, Albanian, anyone—remain willing to ask difficult questions about what their governments are doing in their names. It depends on whether we're paying attention.
I'm paying attention.
And from where I sit, rolling my wheelchair to the window to watch the evening light fade over the Albanian hills, the presence of ICE at an Olympic Games—any Olympic Games—feels like a quiet alarm bell ringing in the distance.
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