The events in Minneapolis are neither an isolated incident nor a parenthesis in the American chronicle: they are a signal. A signal that speaks of an increasingly tense internal climate in the United States, of a use of force that goes beyond the normal democratic dialectic and of a federal power that, in the management of public order and immigration, takes on increasingly muscular traits. It is from this context that a far from theoretical concern arises: the presence of the ICE at the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina could turn a global event of sport and peace into a detonator of international tensions.

We live in a time when the perceived dominates over the real

Even if theICE in Milan were to do nothing or be more than a few in number, even if it were to transform itself into the Salvation Army in the coming days, by now the mere nominal presence would be enough to inflame tempers. ICE today is not perceived as a mere administrative agency: it has become the symbol of an aggressive securitarian policy, of operations conducted in paramilitary fashion, and of a vision of power based on deterrence, not mediation. In this sense, ICE increasingly resembles a praetorian guard of the Trumpian political circle, a body that responds to a logic of loyalty and intimidation.

The risk is not so much operational as symbolic

The Olympics are, by definition, a highly visible event. Everything that happens there is amplified, observed, reinterpreted. To think that the global clamour aroused by episodes such as those in Minneapolis cannot reverberate on a stage like Milan Cortina is to underestimate the power of contemporary communication and the ability of conflicts to move, contaminate, re-emerge elsewhere.

This is not to justify any violent demonstrations, which are always to be unambiguously condemned. But history teaches us that preventive repression and the display of force do not defuse conflict: they often attract it. Genoa 2001 did not explode by chance and an international event turned into a showdown, generating a spiral of violence that no one, officially, said they wanted.

Today, Milan risks finding itself in a similar situation, albeit in a different context

The ICE is not a neutral force in the eyes of global public opinion. Its mission and methods are incompatible with the values that the Olympic spirit claims to embody. Freedom, equality, fraternity are not decorative slogans: they are principles that cannot be reconciled with an apparatus perceived as repressive, selective and ideologically aligned.

Then there is a second, perhaps even more disturbing level of seriousness. The imposition of the ICE presence can be read as a gesture of geopolitical bullying. A way of affirming that the United States, or rather the Trump administration, does not ask: it decides. Even towards allied countries, even in contexts that should be multilateral, shared, symbolically neutral. It is a show of force that does not strengthen security, but undermines trust.

If the presence of USintelligence seems obvious, just as the presence of the Secret Service and the Diplomatic Security Service for the security of the Vice-President and the Secretary of State seems obvious, what would be the usefulness, especially in the aftermath of the events in Minneapolis, of the presence of men from a US federal agency that is supposed to deal with immigration and customs within the United States, if not in the demonstration of force and arrogance on the part of the Trump administration?

In this sense, ICE at the Olympics would not only be a wrong choice: it would send the wrong message

A message that risks transforming Milan Cortina into a theatre of global protest, attracting movements, activists, and opposition that would see the Games no longer as a sports festival, but as the perfect opportunity to contest an increasingly authoritarian model of power. All the more so if everything is anticipated, in the aftermath of the guerrilla warfare that raped Turin, by the debate on the preventive detention which, if it were to come into force at the same time as the start of the Olympics, could lead to the paradox that would see ICE men – perhaps masked as per the rules of engagement – roaming around undisturbed, while private citizens could be prevented from expressing their dissent through a police detention applied on the basis of mere discretion.

Finally, there is a reflection that goes beyond the contingency

If Jesse Owens ran today not in Milan Cortina but in Aspen, Colorado, would he be celebrated as a universal icon, or stopped by ICE as a ‘suspect’ body and perhaps executed on the podium?

The provocation is strong, but not gratuitous. The Olympics were born to overcome borders, barriers, rigid identities. The ICE is born to control them and, with Trump, it turns into the bloodiest apparatus of terror, repression and violence.

Milan-Cortina still has little time to prevent history from repeating itself

But ignoring the signs, playing down perceptions, dismissing concerns as alarmism would be an unforgivable mistake. Because when security becomes intimidation, the line between prevention and repression dissolves. And then it does not take much for an Olympics to stop being a celebration and become, once again, an injury.