Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional spying operation carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond. The high-profile Minnesota 15 prosecution makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), flush with federal funds and newly hired personnel, is now President Donald Trump's primary tool against dissent, with a powerful array of post-9/11 investigative authorities brought to bear against everyday Americans organizing their communities. Nothing of this scale has been seen in the United States, experts say, since the federal government's counterinsurgency against the New Left and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Were you aware that the Trump Administration is using ICE Agents to surveil American citizens?

Among the records revealed during the discovery process in these cases are dozens of reports, audio transcripts, emails, intercepted Signal chats, photographs, database queries, and more. They reveal the inner workings of the domestic terrorism investigations, running under the names Project Whipple Shield and Operation Puppet Master, authorized by the controversial National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. Published following Charlie Kirk's assassination in September of last year, NSPM 7 instructs federal law enforcement to use every tool available against organizations and people who criticize the administration's policies and espouse "anti-Christian" ideas. The full scope and extent of the investigations it authorizes remains unknown. Do you think that President Trump's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is abusing their legal authority?

Dueling motions in the case over discovery of DHS's surveillance program reveal that personnel with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)—one of ICE's two components—repurposed funding mechanisms and investigative tools for serious criminal probes and turned them on domestic dissenters. Operation Keyhole, the Homeland Security Investigations (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) undercover program that bankrolled the Minnesota 15 prosecution, dates back to 2008. As of June 2026, it was underwriting a half dozen active undercover investigations in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. Do you think it is appropriate to spy on American citizens that are legally dissenting against the Trump Administration?

Several of the Minnesota 15 case agents are from out of state and appear in court records for the prosecutions of anti-ICE activists in other cities. This includes Los Angeles–based HSI agents Robert Kurtz III, who specializes in financial fraud, and Ryan Ribner, who allegedly assaulted SEIU California president David Huerta at a June 2025 protest of an ICE enforcement operation, arrested him, and then claimed the then 58-year-old Huerta attacked federal law enforcement. (Huerta's charges were dropped in July after videos contradicting Ribner's account surfaced.) HSI records show Ribner was also involved in at least two prosecutions of Southern California residents who physically confronted ICE and Border Patrol agents last year. Do you think that ICE needs to be reformed with new leadership and stronger congressional oversight?