Court documents show that federal law enforcement conducted an undercover surveillance campaign in Minnesota earlier this year, targeting community organizations, progressive groups, and labor unions demonstrating against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis.
Federal officials described the surveillance programs, Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield, as attempts to identify conspirators aiding “violent opportunists and agitators.” But Kevin Riach, a defense attorney for one of the people accused in the case, called the programs a politically driven “broad and irrational investigation.”
DHS agents reportedly attended organizing meetings, monitored chats, gathered license plate information, and used administrative subpoenas to get financial records on protesters from organizations like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Communications Workers of America, Voices for Racial Justice, and the Sunrise Movement.
According to the Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative branch created a slide titled ‘The Conspiracy,’ showing 18 organizations, from a small Minneapolis bicycle repair collective to the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor groups in the U.S. Federal officials also accessed financial records stretching years for organizations ranging from the Sunrise Movement to large unions like SEIU and the Communications Workers of America.
“You are requested not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time,” read a DHS request to Fedwire, the money transfer system operated by the Federal Reserve, according to the AP.
Labor Notes, a union advocacy website, reports that CWA Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson said his local had been subjected to “an illegal and aggressive federal investigation” involving undercover agents entering the union office, infiltrating co-sponsored meetings, subpoenaing finances and surveilling one officer. Knutson said members were targeted because they took part in neighborhood rapid-response work, protests at the Whipple Federal Building and a Jan. 23 Day of Truth and Freedom opposing ICE.
Labor for Democracy, a network of unions, issued a statement condemning the actions of Department of Homeland Security agents in Minnesota: “This government’s assaults on our basic democratic rights are part of the Trump ‘National Security Memorandum Taskforce’ established to target progressive and anti-authoritarian/anti-fascist forces, accuse them of ‘domestic terrorism,’ while President Trump pardoned January 6th insurrectionists who actually attempted to violently steal an election.”
Labor for Democracy also said DHS’ actions should lead to state and congressional investigations, prosecutions of officials who violated constitutional rights, and hearings before the House and Senate Homeland Security committees.
Carl Rosen, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America former general president, called the DHS surveillance “an attack on everyone who believes in the right to free speech, the right to peaceful assembly, and the right to organize.”
Advocates are saying the DHS operations could have a chilling effect on ordinary labor organizing. UFCW Local 663 executive board member Paul Kirk-Davidoff told Labor Notes that four undercover agents attended a Feb. 15 Workers Assembly to Defeat ICE, a gathering of more than 300 unionists and community members, and took detailed notes on speakers and political positions.
Federal government monitoring of worker power and racial justice movements most recently dates back to the period between 1956 and 1971, when the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveilled, infiltrated, discredited, and disrupted groups it considered subversive. The Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Black Panther Party, Young Lords Party, American Indian Movement, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference received anonymous mailings, faced police harassment, and dealt with organizational infiltration that was designed to disrupt and discredit them.
