ICE-style raid at Rome’s Termini station shows the Meloni government’s siege aesthetics, with the police as an occupying force

~ Observatorio Repressione ~

What unfolded at Termini station on 14 January was no ordinary security check. It was a show of power. Helicopters hovered over the tracks, there were dogs, blocked streets, men in uniform everywhere. Hundreds of people were identified, few detained, a few arrested. A monumental spectacle designed to send a clear message: we’re in charge here. This isn’t security. This is armed propaganda.

Balaclavas aside, the script is crystal clear. Last Thursday’s operation in Rome follows a precise model: that of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States. The “Trumptruppen,” as they were sarcastically but accurately called. The same muscular aesthetic, the same intimidating logic, the same obsession with the internal enemy. Migrants, the poor, the marginalised: perfect targets for building consensus through fear.

If it was just theatre, we could file it as farce. But it’s not. In the days immediately preceding, while helicopters took off and the dogs sniffed, criminal complaints rained down — including against minors — for protesting genocide in Palestine and in solidarity with the Flotilla. Repression in the squares and that in the stations are the same thing: two sides of a single project.

While uniforms occupied public space, work was in full swing behind desks. A new Security Bill and a new Security Decree: some 60 measures to guarantee what was once called “law and order” and is now sold under the more presentable name of “security.” It is the second crackdown since the April decree, the first to be truly alarming for the country’s democratic stability. And it won’t be the last. Nor the second to last.

Something has changed, and is changing rapidly, in the strategy of the government led by Giorgia Meloni and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. That something has a name and surname: Donald Trump. Not just as a political ally, but as an operational model. Total securitisation, the aesthetics of siege, the police as an occupying force. The idea that governing means flexing one’s muscles, not solving problems.

The Termini raid is a manifesto: identify to intimidate, arrest to demonstrate, strike to educate. The judicial outcome doesn’t matter; what counts is image. Substantive legality doesn’t matter; what matters is the perception of strength. It’s the ICE logic transplanted to Italy: a state that shows off to convince “its own” and terrorise “others.”

Meanwhile, the regulatory groundwork is being prepared: more police powers , more searches, more “preventive” detentions, more administrative sanctions. Fewer rights, fewer guarantees, less room for dissent. Security as a club, not as protection. Social conflict treated as a pathology to be repressed, not as an issue to be addressed.

Anyone who speaks of “security” is lying, knowing they’re lying. Because nothing is safe in a city transformed into a military set. Nothing is safe in a country that criminalises poverty and represses solidarity . Nothing is safe in a government that copies the worst authoritarian models from overseas and dresses them in the Italian flag.

The raid at Termini station is not an exception. It’s a warning. Meloni and Piantedosi’s dream is clear: an ICE-style police force, a low-intensity democracy, a society governed by fear. It’s up to us to decide whether to accept the role of extra in this spectacle or break the scenery.

Machine translation