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MILAN — <\/span>Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Milan to protest the deployment of ICE agents during the upcoming Winter Olympics<\/a>, unbothered by the fact that agents would be stationed in a control room and not operating on the streets.<\/p>\n The protest in Piazza XXV Aprile, a square named for the date of Italy\u2019s liberation from Nazi fascism in 1945, drew people from the left-leaning Democratic Party, the CGIL trade union confederation and the ANPI organizations that protect the memory of Italy\u2019s partisan resistance during World War II, along with many other people.<\/p>\n Organizers handed out plastic whistles, which participants blew as music blared from a van. The protest was as much against the news that agents from a division of ICE would participate<\/a> in security for the U.S. delegation as against what many saw as creeping fascism in the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cNo thank you, from Minnesota<\/a> to the world, at the side of anyone who fights for human rights,\u2019\u2019 read one banner. \u201cNever again means never again for anyone,\u2019\u2019 read another, and \u201cIce only in Spritz,\u2019\u2019 a reference to a popular aperitif, read yet another.<\/p>\n News of the deployment of ICE agents has provoked a backlash in Italy. Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala has said they were not welcome. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has been called to Parliament to testify about the deployment this week.<\/p>\n Protester Silvana Grassi held a sign that read \u201cIce = Gestapo.\u201d She said the scenes of ICE agents in Minneapolis shooting and killing protesters and detaining children were deeply upsetting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes me want to cry to think of it,\u2019\u2019 Grassi said. \u201cIt\u2019s too terrible. How did they elect such a terrible, evil man?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n The ICE agents to be deployed to Milan are not from the same unit as the immigration agents cracking down in Minnesota and other U.S. cities.<\/p>\n Homeland Security Investigations, a ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown<\/a> in the U.S. is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if it\u2019s not the same ones, we don\u2019t want them here,\u2019\u2019 Grassi said.<\/p>\n Paolo Bortoletto, also holding a banner, was aware that the officers would have an investigative and not a street role.<\/p>\n Still, he said, \u201cWe don\u2019t want them in our country. We are a peaceful country. We don\u2019t want fascists. It\u2019s their ideas that bother us.”<\/p>\n The Olympics begin Feb. 6 with an opening ceremony that will be attended by U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n