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

MILAN — Many officials supporting the roughly 250 U.S. athletes competing in this month’s Winter Olympics arrived in Italy last weekend to a welcome they may not have expected: Hundreds of demonstrators flooded a square in central Milan to protest a 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, begin on Thursday with the opening ceremony scheduled for Friday. In this context, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry, described the involvement of the agents as “distracting” and “sad”.

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

Many protesters whistled and held signs depicting the five Olympic rings in the shape of handcuffs above the words “No ice cream in Milan.” A woman held a handmade poster showing photos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two Minnesotans killed by federal agents last month, alongside Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was taken from his home in Minneapolis to a detention center in Texas.

Anti-ICE protests take place in Piazza XXV Aprile ahead of the Milan Olympics.

(Lucia Buricelli/Associated Press)

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

Tricia McLaughlin, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, 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 try to quell the controversy.

DHS said the agents sent to Milan are not immigration agents but are from a unit known as Homeland Security Investigations, which specializes in cross-border crime. They typically 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 walk through the concourse of the M4 Metroline station at Milan Linate Airport on Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

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

“The USOPC does not work with United States law enforcement or immigration agencies in the planning or execution of the Games, including agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, often referred to as ICE,” the committee said in a statement. “The Italian authorities are solely responsible for all security operations during the Games.”

Despite the tensions, in the days leading up to the Games there were few signs of the strong security presence that marked the Paris Olympics 17 months ago. At Linate Airport, the closest of Milan’s three airports to the city center, two Italian soldiers in camouflage and armed with long guns gathered outside the arrival gates Monday evening. They left on Tuesday afternoon.

Five miles away, in the Piazza del Duomo, the cultural and social heart of Milan, two pairs of soldiers stood on either side of the huge square, huddled under white awnings on either side of a pop-up Olympic souvenir tent and ignoring the hundreds of international tourists raising their phones to take photos of the ancient Gothic cathedral that gives the square its name.

A building in the heart of Piazza del Doumo is lit up Tuesday by bustling Olympic competitors.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

On the street, where the tram tracks wind past the trendy shops and restaurants that line the busy Via Orefici, groups of municipal police and carabinieri, the national police known by their black uniforms designed by Giorgio Armani, joked among themselves. They were much less threatening than the omnipresent roving patrols of soldiers and police in France.

A local resident shrugged her shoulders in the presence of the police.

“Given the iconic and most touristy place in Milan,” she said, “there are always a lot of police and soldiers.”

It’s unclear how U.S. athletes will be received at Friday’s opening ceremony, which is expected to be attended by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“When they wear the flag and the tracksuit and they’re announced as the United States, obviously that’s an opportunity for spectators to make their feelings about the United States known,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East studies fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute and an expert on sports and international relations.

Europeans currently have strong feelings about the United States, feelings sparked by more than the images of ICE agents that have been on TV news and filling social media for months in Italy and beyond. In recent months, President Trump has sent forces to Venezuela to remove its president, threatened military action against Iran, fired on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and denigrated Europe as “decaying” and its leaders “weak.”

Demonstrators in Milan hold signs protesting ICE on Saturday in solidarity with residents of Minneapolis.

(Alessandro Bremec / Associated Press)

“Without us,” he said in a combative speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “you would all be speaking German.”

What most upset the continent amid the chaos, however, was Trump’s insistence that the United States take control of Greenland from Denmark, a staunch North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, warning the Danes and seven other countries that they would be hit with 25 percent tariffs if they did not relent. Many European far-right parties, whose members often support Trump, now consider the American president as an “enemy of Europe”, according to a poll published by the Parisian platform Le Grand Continent.

Following the blowback, Trump backed away from the tariff threat and said he would not take control of Greenland by force, but the consequences of the tensions remain.

“Greenland, in particular, has really struck a chord. It’s unfortunate as we approach the Olympics,” said Coates Ulrichsen, born in Greece to English and Norwegian parents.

And that makes the American team and its 232 athletes, the largest contingent at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, a convenient foil for European anger.

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

At the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, for example, which opened 17 months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the American team was booed.

“The Olympics are no stranger to politics,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “And obviously the key element [of athletes] Walking behind a flag is, in some ways, a very easy target.

Some Italians aren’t so sure.

“My personal view is that American athletes will not be targeted by the protests,” said one woman who asked that her name not be used because she works with many international clients, including some in the United States. “It’s more of a political issue.”

She also said that the attitude of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of the European leaders most supportive of President Trump, has blunted public opposition in the United States.

The Olympic rings ahead of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Tuesday.

(Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images)

Since this month’s Games, the first Winter Olympics to officially have co-host cities, will be spread across four clusters covering about 8,500 square miles in northern Italy, there will be four opening ceremonies Friday, with the main one at the San Siro Olympic Stadium in Milan starting at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. Smaller events will take place 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 all competed in the Summer Games, said walking in the opening ceremony has long been a dream of hers. And she doesn’t think politics will ruin this Friday.

“The Olympics bring all nations together,” she said. “That’s one of the things about the Olympics, and it really shows in the unity. I think we’ll be fine.”

In an effort to separate athletes from politicians, the U.S. governing bodies of three winter sports — figure skating, speed skating and hockey — have changed the name of their hosting space from Milan to Winter House.

They planned to call it the Ice House.