{"id":49722,"date":"2026-08-16T13:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=49722"},"modified":"2026-08-16T13:10:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:10:20","slug":"u-s-investigated-left-leaning-groups-during-minnesota-immigration-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/08\/16\/u-s-investigated-left-leaning-groups-during-minnesota-immigration-crackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Investigated Left-Leaning Groups During Minnesota Immigration Crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The government conducted expansive surveillance, infiltrated group chats and obtained financial records of organizations never accused of crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"People
People marched through downtown Minneapolis in late January to protest the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Alan<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Ernesto<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Alan Feuer<\/a> and Ernesto Londo\u00f1o<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan Feuer reported from New York, and Ernesto Londo\u00f1o from St. Paul, Minn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aug. 13, 2026 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four days after Alex Pretti was fatally shot while filming officers taking part in the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the Homeland Security Department quietly opened an investigation at its office in St. Paul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The target was not the Border Patrol agents who had killed Mr. Pretti, a 37-year-old government nurse, in late January. Instead, it was several left-leaning political organizations \u2014 labor unions, a climate change group, socialist collectives \u2014 that investigators believed had provided help and money to what they described as the \u201cviolent opportunists and agitators\u201d on the street, according to newly released government documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of their inquiry, the documents show, homeland security officials used an array of invasive tactics during the first half of this year to gather information on many groups and individuals who were never accused of crimes, crossing the line that has traditionally stood between investigating criminal activity and political dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one instance, officials used administrative subpoenas to obtain more than\u00a0three years of financial records<\/a>\u00a0from the Sunrise Movement, an environmental action group, and a labor union, the Communications Workers of America. That time frame went well beyond the civil unrest in Minnesota, which was prompted by the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to the state during the winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another, investigators scrutinized three years\u2019 worth of wire transfers<\/a> made by the nation\u2019s biggest health care workers union, the Service Employees International Union, in what they referred to as an inquiry into \u201cdomestic terrorist financing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The documents further detailed an expansive covert surveillance operation in which undercover agents spied on protesters and organizers at meetings held online, as well as in libraries, parks and churches, taking down not only what they said, but also their names and sometimes license plate numbers. The undercover agents also infiltrated group chats on Signal, listening as activists discussed coming demonstrations and their political opinions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, none of the organizations targeted by the homeland security inquiry, conducted with the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Minnesota, have faced charges. And yet, as the investigation moved forward, prosecutors showed grand jurors a PowerPoint slide<\/a> asserting that 18 groups \u2014 including the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the country\u2019s largest federation of labor unions \u2014 were part of a conspiracy to impede the work of immigration officers in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, that supposed conspiracy led in June to the indictment of 15 people<\/a> accused of interfering with law enforcement agents as members of the far-left movement known as antifa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Homeland Security Department did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Minnesota declined to answer questions about the investigative tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By its own account, the institutional left in Minnesota, especially the labor movement, played a central role in bringing out hundreds of thousands of people to march in protest of President Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown in the state. But the demonstrations \u2014 and corresponding efforts to monitor the movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents \u2014 were largely undertaken by ordinary residents, most of whom have said they were committed to peaceful resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile federal agents repeatedly broke the law, ordinary people exercised their First Amendment rights to protect their neighbors,\u201d said Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement. \u201cThe Trump administration is now trying to intimidate individuals and organizations who opposed his agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the 15 people charged in the so-called antifa case did, in fact, belong to some of the unions and political organizations that faced scrutiny over several months during the spring and winter. But the newly released documents, which were disclosed as part of a motion asking for more details about the criminal inquiry, suggest that investigators used those tenuous connections to take a deep dive into the inner workings of the groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin Riach, the lawyer who filed the motion<\/a>, in Federal District Court in Minnesota, wrote that the homeland security investigation into the interference with federal agents \u201cextended far beyond any potential threat to law enforcement safety.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt concluded, with no evidence (but obvious political animus),\u201d he wrote, \u201cthat numerous Twin Cities unions and nonprofit organizations were involved in a widespread conspiracy,\u201d adding that \u201cit surveilled and surreptitiously gathered financial records generated by these organizations despite the lack of any connection between those organizations and criminal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The investigation in some ways called to mind Cointelpro, the intrusive counterintelligence program that the F.B.I. ran against leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s under the leadership of the bureau\u2019s director, J. Edgar Hoover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Minnesota surveillance reports in particular documented what largely appeared to be political activity protected by the First Amendment. They showed how undercover agents embedded themselves in a \u201cnoise protest\u201d outside a hotel where immigration agents were staying and took down notes at other gatherings as demonstrators brainstormed ideas on how to protest the surge of officers who descended on Minnesota late last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former federal prosecutors questioned why homeland security officials took the lead in a case that would typically be overseen by the F.B.I. Others said that the broad use of subpoenas targeting labor unions and other groups was unusual and concerning, especially if it turns out there was no evidence that the organizations were breaking the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government\u2019s power to investigate is extraordinary, and with that power comes a responsibility to exercise care and restraint,\u201d said Harry Jacobs<\/a>, who resigned as the chief<\/a> of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Minnesota in January in protest over the Trump administration\u2019s handling of the killing of Renee Good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn investigation should begin with a legitimate basis to suspect criminal conduct, not with a chosen institution or group,\u201d Mr. Jacobs added. \u201cProsecutors must follow the facts and the law wherever they lead, rather than select a target and work backwards to build a case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of the groups that were targeted in the inquiry, known as Operation Puppet Master<\/a>, and in a follow-up investigation called Project Whipple Shield, declined to comment. (Whipple Shield is a reference to the Whipple Building, which served as a hub of the immigration operation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Daniel N. Rosen, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota, announced the indictment of the 15 purported antifa members two months ago, he chose his words carefully, insisting that the defendants had been charged only because each of them had \u201cviolently opposed\u201d federal agents taking part in the Trump administration\u2019s immigration agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBe assured,\u201d he told reporters, \u201cthe Department of Justice and my U.S. attorney\u2019s office has and will distinguish between lawful protest and criminal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Daniel N. Rosen, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, has said his office \u201cwill distinguish between lawful protest and criminal conduct.\u201dCredit…David Berding\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But what Mr. Rosen did not disclose that day was that the charges filed against the 15 defendants stemmed from a sprawling investigation. Its tentacles had touched the lives of scores of ordinary people \u2014 teachers, veterans, union members \u2014 who in many instances had gotten together to do little more than discuss monitoring ICE agents or abolishing ICE altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case in St. Paul, like others against ICE protesters, arose from a sweeping directive issued last year by Mr. Trump known as National Security Presidential Memo 7. The memo ordered a whole-of-government approach to stem what officials have described as a rising tide of left-wing political violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But former prosecutors and civil rights lawyers have criticized it for encouraging aggressive investigations and prosecutions of groups and people on the left for activities typically protected by free speech laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In drafting their indictment, prosecutors under Mr. Rosen focused on an organization called Direct Action Minnesota, or DAMN, an umbrella group that describes itself as a \u201cdecentralized coalition of working-class people engaged in various forms of community defense against the current federal occupation\u201d in Minnesota. Prosecutors said that the group trained its members in how to use shields against law enforcement officers, conduct surveillance, plan events and mount \u201crapid mass mobilization\u201d against actions by ICE officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The indictment details some behavior by protesters with ties to DAMN that clearly seems violent or obstructive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, prosecutors said that on Jan. 23, demonstrators who had gathered at the Whipple Building threw ice blocks at law enforcement vehicles. They also formed a blockade, boxing federal agents into one area near the federal building. Weeks later, prosecutors added, some of the defendants put debris in a road outside the building, trying to block access to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the indictment also notes that the defendants often relied on information gleaned from group chats whose members tracked and monitored vehicles going to and from the Whipple Building \u2014 behavior that is not necessarily illegal. Indeed, the federal judge overseeing the case, Katherine M. Menendez, has already issued an order in a separate civil proceeding saying that protesters cannot be arrested simply for following federal agents in their vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, some groups that organized and ran the group chats were targeted by the surveillance operation and later identified in the prosecutors\u2019 grand jury presentation as being part of the conspiracy to interfere with ICE agents. Other members of the alleged conspiracy were said to include the local chapters of the S.E.I.U. and the Democratic Socialists of America, a state teachers\u2019 union \u2014 and even the Grease Pit, a small bike shop in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his motion, Mr. Riach described how federal agents took down the license plate numbers of people who attended a training session at a church in Roseville, Minn., and used that information to obtain their names. The agents then searched social media for images of the people, compiling an \u201cintel work-up\u201d that included detailed personal information about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone of these individuals did anything other than engage in protected First Amendment speech in a church meeting room,\u201d Mr. Riach wrote. \u201cYet now their personal information is memorialized in a D.H.S. dossier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan Feuer<\/a> is a reporter for The Times who covers the effects President Trump has had on the courts, the Justice Department and the broader rule of law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ernesto Londo\u00f1o<\/a> is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. He welcomes tips and can be reached at elondono.81<\/a> on Signal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government conducted expansive surveillance, infiltrated group chats and obtained financial records of organizations never accused of crimes. By Alan Feuer and Ernesto Londo\u00f1o Alan Feuer reported from New York, and Ernesto Londo\u00f1o from St. Paul, Minn. Aug. 13, 2026 (NYTimes.com) Four days after Alex Pretti was fatally shot while filming officers taking… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2080,1888,1087],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49722"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49723,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49722\/revisions\/49723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}