Anti-ICE protesters rally in Milan before Winter Olympics 

Hundreds of protesters have gathered in Milan to reject the presence of United States immigration agents in the city before the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Games.

The student-led demonstration on Friday featured banners reading “ICE should be in my drinks, not my city” in reaction to the reported presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials providing security for the US delegation at the games.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is a separate division from the department playing a lead role in US President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation push at home, which provoked global outrage after the fatal shootings of two US citizens and the arrest of a five-year-old and his father.

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi insisted this week that HSI would operate only within US diplomatic missions, insisting that officials “are not operational agents” and “have no executive function”.

But students in Milan were not convinced, turning up in force on the streets with plastic whistles, which have become a symbol of anti-ICE rallies in the US, and calling for visiting US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to leave.

Protester Giacomo Calvi told the AFP news agency he was protesting the US “anti-immigration police, which are carrying out all kinds of violence in the United States”.

“I thought that this was a good opportunity to show that the rest of the world is not OK with what’s happening in Minnesota,” Katie Legare, a protester from Minnesota currently studying in Europe, told the news agency Reuters.

Vance is on a weeklong visit to Italy at a time when relations with Europe have been strained under the Trump administration, which has claimed Europe is facing “civilisational erasure” due to mass migration.

The US vice president and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is close to Trump, hailed their “shared values” on Friday, with the latter calling the the games an event that brings together Italy and the US, and “Western civilisation”.

Vance’s office said in a statement that he and the prime minister discussed the strength of bilateral relations between the nations and mutual efforts to improve the business and investment climate.