ICE at the Winter Olympics: Shadows of an ignominious past

Temporarily based out of the American consulate in Milan, the official purpose of a detachment of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), a key player in President Donald Trump’s deportation initiative, is to provide security “backup” to this year’s winter Olympics. This ostensibly includes watching over the 232 US athletes taking part in the Games but also the presidential delegation at the opening ceremony led by Vice President JD Vance, Usha Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Ambassador Tilman Fertitta.

According to US officials, ICE’s role is considered “normal procedure”.The organization’s Homeland Security Investigations section (HIS), they maintain, often provides security at such international events. Nevertheless, it remains curious that ICE was reportedly not present in France during the 2024 Summer Games but insists on being in Milan-Cortina now.

Anger at ICE for being at the Olympics

ICE: The new Blackshirts?

All this has left a very bad taste for the international community. The Italians are particularly upset. For many, the memory of paramilitary Blackshirts during the fascist Mussolini period leading up to and during World War II is not that distant. As Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, who stressed that ICE was not welcome in his city, maintained: “ICE is a militia that kills, that enters people’s homes by signing its own warrants.”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has removed itself from the debate by officially declaring that it is up to the host country to manage security. Nevertheless, several IOC employees have privately voiced concerns that ICE’s presence, even if only a small detachment, is not acceptable.

One representative went as far as to point out off-the-record that the last thing the Swiss-based organization wants is a repeat of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, which Hitler had hosted as a showcase for the new Germany.

While the Nazis sought to present themselves as open and respectful through their impressive organization and shining, healthy young Germans, the Games were nevertheless dominated by Nazi salutes and propaganda. Both Sturmabteilung (SA) Brownshirts, a thuggish law and order organization created by Hitler in the 1920s, as well as the more powerful SS were present.

The SA lost much of its power following the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, yet the Brownshirts continued to be deployed as a force for violent vigilantism. Its thugs roamed the streets in strong-armed intimidation against Germany’s Jewish population as well as leftwing and other anti-Nazi activists, often helping to round them up for dispatching to concentration camps.

Human beings and democracy: victims of ICE

America’s version of an “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”

While ICE and Border Patrol, whose ranks include recent extreme right-wing hires with limited training, may still have far to go to replicate the SA, they are dangerously verging on becoming offside militia that only answer to the President while operating with seeming impunity. The recent citizen-recorded killings, or executions as many maintain, by ICE in Minneapolis underline just how quickly this evolution with deadly consequences has occurred. As The Economist points out: “The question now is how far Mr Trump will take his paramilitary experiment.”

As a journalist with longtime experience encountering arrogant, gun-toting militia in countries ranging from Somalia and Congo to Afghanistan, I consider the historic Brownshirt and Blackshirt analogies important to emphasize. Yet, with its massive budget and lack of proper oversight, ICE perhaps comes across closer to the paramilitary militia of contemporary authoritarian regimes such as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The latter have brutally repressed, and continue to repress, popular uprisings in Tehran and other cities killing 20,000 or more mainly young dissidents.

Ironically, with promises of support, Trump urged Iran’s street opponents to continue rebelling, but up till now has done nothing. This has left the Iranian Supreme Leader and his ruthless minority regime to continue arresting, torturing and killing young insurgents.

As others point out, ICE is also reminiscent of the hardline militia that enabled former Filippino President Rodrigo Duterte, recently indicted for crimes against humanity, to torture and kill alleged drug dealers by the thousands.

Numerous other critics, including US expatriates living in Europe, have expressed similar concerns of ICE undermining the American Constitution and democracy by operating without restraint, but also with the fear that its abuses could spread elsewhere.

Expatriate Americans demonstrate

An increasingly powerful tool of the President

Only this past week, a small group of non-partisan American citizens demonstrated against ICE at the Handicap International Chair opposite Geneva’s Palais des Nations. They maintained that ICE is not only operating as an abusive tool by the Trump presidency to repress democracy, but also to arrest, beat up and kill both foreigners and citizens alike who have dared stand up to this uncontrolled paramilitary force. Often using extremist terminology, ICE operatives regularly refer to their victims as ‘terrorists’.

“What sort of message is Washington sending to the rest of the world by bringing ICE to the Olympic Games,” said one representative of Democrats Abroad, which seeks to encourage US citizens living overseas – an estimated 2.8 million of voting age not including military – to take part both in mid-term and presidential elections.

Many overseas Americans do not vote either because they are not aware that they can, but because they have failed to register. The purpose of DA, but also Republicans Abroad, is to make US citizens aware of their rights, even if the current administration appears to be doing everything possible to curb access such as easy-to-use mail in ballots, a common practise in many states.

The question now is whether lawmakers, be they Republicans who control both the Senate and the House, but also opposition Democrats, will allow such abuses to continue.

Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet is a foreign correspondent and author who has covered wars, humanitarian crises and other international issues for more than four decades.