Government defends surveillance as ‘standard law enforcement practice’
The surveillance operation, disclosed in a federal court motion filed this week in a conspiracy case against ICE protesters, swept in meetings at churches, libraries, restaurants, and schools around the Twin Cities. For months, the documents show, federal agents secretly made recordings of those meetings, infiltrated private group chats, sought the financial records of national labor unions, and gathered information on community members who had not been accused of any crimes.
According to the motion, an undercover DHS agent attended a protest-organizing meeting at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville in February. The agent captured license plates of people there and compiled dossiers including attendees’ names, addresses, and information about their families and jobs.
The Rev. Steve Sylvester, the church’s interim pastor, told NPR he learned of the surveillance shortly before announcing it to his mostly elderly congregation at a recent Sunday service. “It feels weird. It feels like I’m living in 1950s Eastern Europe,” Sylvester said. “I don’t know that it feels frightening or daunting. It just feels completely out of place and inappropriate.”
Surveillance extended beyond Prince of Peace. At University Baptist Church in Minneapolis, an undercover agent wore a wire to a self-defense class in May, according to court documents. Cody Sanders, the church’s interim pastor, said his first reaction was surprise, then anger. “I do imagine people will look over their shoulder a little more and wonder, ‘Is there someone here who’s trying to gather information?’ Or when they see a strange car in the parking lot,” Sanders said. “I hope we can resist the kind of suspicion that this is likely to generate.”
The operation reached private businesses and public facilities. Sergio Manancero, general manager of the Minneapolis brewery La Doña Cerveceria, said an undercover agent attended a January meeting at his business. “I would understand why they would send somebody to that meeting, considering it was open to anybody that wanted to come because they were probably trying to figure out whether or not protesters were going to do something more serious against their agents,” Manancero said. “Do I think the government spying on us in that way is maybe bad? Yes. Am I surprised that they did it? No.” Manancero said organizers at the event were planning a lawful ICE protest.
At a public library, an undercover agent allegedly told a person at a meeting that he worked in construction and could build items for more “direct action,” and that he did not mind going to jail, according to the filings.
The surveillance reached beyond physical meetings. DHS obtained financial records for several nonprofits and labor unions, including the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America, according to court documents. Prosecutors said requesting the records was “within the authority” of the agency.
One government document shown to grand jurors displayed a PowerPoint slide depicting a web of 18 organizations under the label “The Conspiracy,” according to the motion. A DHS agent testified that the diagram showed other organizations the defendants in the conspiracy case were affiliated with — including a local teachers’ union, a bicycle repair shop, and the Minnesota affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said in a statement that the government is “bringing back McCarthyism.” In its response to the court motion, the government said it did not actually argue that the AFL-CIO or any other organizations shown in the web were part of the conspiracy.
Rachel Levinson-Waldman, who directs the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the scope of the operation was remarkable. “Quite honestly, it was breathtaking,” Levinson-Waldman said. “Just the scope of what was being revealed in terms of how deeply it had gone, how many government resources were being devoted to this.” Levinson-Waldman added that the tactics described in the documents appeared to break from decades-long norms and reminded her of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program that ran from the 1950s to the early 1970s. That program targeted organizations the government deemed subversive, including the Communist Party, the Black Panthers, and civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The abuses of COINTELPRO, Levinson-Waldman said, led to a series of reforms including tighter Justice Department guidelines on investigative techniques.
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the tactics also raised First Amendment concerns because surveillance can sweep up people engaged in lawful activity. “These reports raise the question of whether the government is investigating crimes or investigating political movements,” Terr said. “When officials are infiltrating political meetings, recording protesters’ license plates and examining years of financial activities by these mainstream advocacy groups, it raises the question, do they have actual evidence of criminal activity here?”
Terr said the implications of the “Conspiracy” web diagram were troubling. “The consequences of that are that many Americans may be afraid to attend a protest, support an advocacy organization, because they don’t want to become the target of a government investigation,” he said.
In a court filing on Friday, the government defended its actions, saying it did not target the thousands of peaceful protesters in Minnesota during the surge but instead focused on the people ultimately charged in the conspiracy case. Prosecutors said those defendants were planning activities not protected by the First Amendment, including setting up blockades at the federal building outside Minneapolis that served as ICE headquarters during the surge. The government characterized the surveillance as “standard law enforcement practice.”
Levinson-Waldman said it was too early to determine whether the surveillance was legal, though other laws impose limits on what federal agents can gather. “Just because something’s legal doesn’t mean that it aligns with people’s sense of what is ethical or what they’re comfortable with having the government doing,” she said.
In a statement, DHS told NPR it does not comment on the existence or status of ongoing investigations and directed questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, which also declined to comment. A hearing in the conspiracy case is scheduled for this week.