The Mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, spoke out Tuesday amid reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would have a security role during the upcoming Winter Olympic Games, which are set to begin in Milan on Feb. 6.
“This is a militia that kills,” Sala said in an interview with Italian media. “It’s a militia that enters people’s homes by signing permits for themselves … It’s clear that they’re not welcome in Milan, there’s no doubt about that.”
“At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is supporting the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and host nation to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations. All security operations remain under Italian authority,” ICE said in a statement to the French news agency AFP.
Piero CRUCIATTI/AFP/Getty 
Sources at the U.S. Embassy in Rome told the AP that ICE would support U.S. diplomatic security details during the Olympics, but that it would not run any immigration enforcement operations in Milan.
A spokesperson at the U.S. embassy would neither confirm nor deny the reports to CBS News on Tuesday.
Despite his disapproval, Sala wondered aloud during the interview with Italy’s RTL Radio 102: “Could we ever say no to Trump?”
“I believe they shouldn’t come to Italy, because they don’t guarantee they’re aligned with our democratic security management methods,” Sala said. “We can take care of their security ourselves. We don’t need ICE.”
Gregorio Borgia/AP
The reports of ICE’s planned role in U.S. security operations during the upcoming Winter Olympic Games came after Italian state television aired video on Sunday of ICE agents threatening to break the windows of a vehicle carrying a state TV crew as they reported on the events in Minneapolis, the AP reported.
The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis over the weekend, less than three weeks after Renee Good, another Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen, was shot and killed by an ICE officer, have put the city at the center of America’s dispute over immigration enforcement and the tactics of its federal agencies.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
