ICE set to Invade Italy: Fascism’s Olympic Encore, From Mussolini’s Milan to Meloni’s Repression

As the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics approach, Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government has ignited a national firestorm by agreeing to accommodate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Italian soil. Italian officials initially denied the reports outright—dismissing them as “fake news” and insisting no foreign police would operate on national territory. Then the U.S. Embassy in Rome confirmed it: ICE personnel would indeed be part of the security detail for the Games. The official line now is that ICE agents will be “based in Milan” and will not patrol Italian streets, supposedly limited to advisory and coordination roles. Yet the language is deliberately vague. No detailed agreement has been made public. No clear delineation of powers or legal immunities has been shared with parliament or the public. The ambiguity is fueling widespread alarm: how many agents? What exact tasks? What operational latitude? When the agency in question is ICE—infamous for its record of extrajudicial executions, racial terror, family destruction, child abductions, and deaths in custody—the accommodation reads as a dangerous normalization of authoritarian presence under the cover of Olympic “security.”

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani attempted to downplay the controversy, stating, “It’s not like the SS is coming.” The remark, intended to reassure, instead provoked a storm of direct comparisons in Italian media between ICE and the Nazi SS—evoking blackshirts, racial persecution, and extrajudicial violence. The phrase has become a lightning rod, amplifying fears that Meloni’s government is inviting a modern echo of the worst fascist policing onto Italian soil.

ICE is not a neutral police force. It is the U.S. deportation machine that has become a global symbol of fascist-style brutality. Since its creation in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security, ICE has deported more than 8 million people, tearing apart families and warehousing migrants in squalid, profit-driven detention centers. Under the first Trump administration, child separations reached their peak, with thousands ripped from parents and held in facilities human rights organizations have compared to concentration camps. The Biden administration did not end the horror—52 deaths in ICE custody in 2023 alone, many from preventable causes: medical neglect, suicide and abuse.

But ICE’s violence spills far beyond detention walls. In Minnesota, the cold-blooded street killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have become international symbols of the agency’s lethal impunity. Media reports, including in the Italian press, have described these as “cold-blooded extrajudicial executions”. Renee Good, a 37-year-old American mother of three and award-winning poet, was fatally shot in the left temple while sitting in her car in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, during an encounter with an ICE agent. Independent video footage analyzed by outlets including ABC News, The Guardian, and CNN shows a chaotic escalation: the agent walked around Good’s vehicle, returned, and fired through the window as she attempted to drive away. No weapon was in her possession, no imminent threat was evident. Good was struck three times (arm, breast, and head), according to a private autopsy.

Just weeks later, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot multiple times and killed by two U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents—ICE’s sister agency under DHS—in south Minneapolis. Bystander, bodycam, and other video (widely circulated by CounterPunch, BBC, NPR, PBS, and The New York Times) clearly show Pretti was unarmed when agents fired at least ten shots over five seconds during a struggle. DHS initially claimed Pretti resisted arrest and threatened officers with a gun, but the reality was clear for all to see, and there was no evidence of him brandishing a weapon or attacking agents. Pretti had participated in protests against Good’s killing earlier in January and had no criminal record.

These killings have triggered an explosion of outrage across the U.S. and internationally. Journalists and human rights activists have called them “cold-blooded executions” and demanded independent investigations, framing them as evidence that ICE is no longer merely a border enforcer but a domestic paramilitary force operating with near-total impunity. The killings have shattered the last illusions of “reform” under Biden, exposing the agency’s structural racism and expanding lethality—once focused almost exclusively on people of color and immigrants, now visibly ensnaring even white, middle class Americans as well, and bursting a bubble of previous indifference.

Adding fuel to the fire in Italy, an Italian RAI state television reporter was threatened in Minneapolis while being driven in a car.  As seen on live video ICE agents threatened to break the windows and drag her and her driver out and arrest them —an incident that has only deepened Italian public fury over the presence of such forces under the guise of security.

The tension in Meloni’s government is palpable: Trump and ICE are deeply unpopular in Europe and Italy, as Trump has been dubbed radioactive by even some right wing media outlets. Yet Meloni seems willing to sacrifice her own popularity for servitude to Trump and what appears to be a truly fascist agenda. The accommodation of ICE fits this pattern perfectly.

Meloni’s regime, rooted in fascist lineage, welcomes this incursion with open arms. Her Brothers of Italy party channels Mussolini’s ghost, blending ultranationalism with anti-migrant hysteria. Matteo Salvini, her coalition partner, vice president and League leader, has long called for mass deportations, echoing Steve Bannon’s playbook. The former Trump strategist—who once plotted to establish a “gladiator school” in an Italian monastery to train far-right cadres—found fertile ground in Meloni’s Italy, praising her as “the most important leader in Europe.” This emerging fascist international—linking the likes of Meloni, Israel’s Netanyahu, Hungary’s Victor Orbán, Argentina’s Milei , and Trump—relies on shared tactics: border walls, demonized “others,” and police-state repression. ICE’s presence fits seamlessly, granting U.S. agents extraterritorial powers to hunt “threats” during the Games, potentially targeting migrants, protesters, or anyone deemed undesirable.

The controversy in Italy is deepened by ICE’s well-documented ties to Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) as the Italian public has been consistently horrified by the ongoing genocide and Trump’s farcical Board of Peace. ICE agents train regularly with their Israeli counterparts, and dozens of current or former IOF soldiers are known to be active within ICE’s ranks. ICE is known to use tactics refined and developed in occupied Palestine—mass surveillance, crowd suppression, and use of force known to maim and kill. DHS-Israeli partnerships, including the “Homeland Security Dialogue,” share technology and intelligence, turning U.S. borders into open-air replicas of Gaza’s control infrastructure. Meloni’s government, which continues to arm Israel while suppressing pro-Palestine voices at home, uses “security” as a fig leaf for silencing dissent. As Gaza’s genocide continues—at least over 72,000 dead—Europe and Italy pander, ignoring UN resolutions and International Court of Justice findings,  while accommodating ICE and Israel. The Olympics serve as the perfect pretext for a broader clampdown, with Gaza’s horrors providing the ideological justification for global authoritarian convergence.

Italy’s post-World War II role as a subservient outpost of U.S. empire is unmistakable, with over 100 American military installations and bases dotting its landscape—from Sigonella in Sicily to Aviano in the north—housing nuclear weapons and serving as launchpads for imperial adventures in the Mediterranean and beyond. This domination, cemented since 1945, has reduced Italy to a strategic vassal, its sovereignty compromised in exchange for NATO membership and economic crumbs. The Trump and Meloni governments amplify this subservience, both steeped in racism, white supremacism, and fantasies of a new Christian crusade against perceived “infidels,” while historically wedded to Zionism’s settler-colonial project in Israel—where ethnic cleansing and apartheid echo the very supremacist ideologies they champion.

Italy’s public outrage reveals the depth of the betrayal. Milan’s mayor, Beppe Sala, said of ICE, “This is a militia that kills, a militia that enters into the homes of people, signing their own warrants. It is clear they are not welcome in Milan, without a doubt.” Unions like USB and CGIL have condemned ICE’s presence as “U.S. colonialism”.  Migrant rights groups warn of raids on undocumented workers building Olympic infrastructure. In Milan—fascism’s birthplace, where blackshirts once marched—activists invoke the antifascist tradition, vowing resistance.

Europe and Italy’s bootlicking to Washington—from NATO to trade deals—sells sovereignty for scraps, turning the continent into an imperial vassal. This ICE incursion is not about sport; it is fascism’s encore. From Trump’s Washington to Mussolini’s Milan and Meloni’s Rome, the lines blur with Trump’s “Board of Peace” sham and Gaza’s and Minnesota’s blood. Stop the genocide, dismantle ICE, reject the fascist tide—or watch empires devour what remains of freedom.

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