Trump’s DHS carried out vast spying operation against unions and left-wing groups in Minnesota

Government documents made public in a federal court filing describe a DHS surveillance operation, dubbed Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield, that infiltrated meetings of unions and left-wing groups in Minneapolis and St. Paul during a federal occupation. Undercover agents recorded conversations, entered encrypted Signal chats, collected license plates, and built dossiers on individuals, while Homeland Security Investigations used administrative summonses to pull years of financial records from unions including the AFL-CIO and SEIU without alleging specific crimes.

The filing, submitted by defense attorney Kevin Riach on behalf of defendant Isaac Sant, states the surveillance followed the killing of Renée Nicole Good by an ICE agent in January and the killing of nurse Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents later that month; no agents involved in either killing have been charged. Instead, 15 anti-ICE protesters were indicted in June on federal felony conspiracy charges under a White House framework known as NSPM-7.

An HSI presentation to the grand jury depicted 18 organizations, including several unions and advocacy groups, connected by arrows to a central group based on overlapping membership, though none of the organizations has been charged with a crime. Financial searches of union accounts turned up routine transactions like dues, pension payments and strike supplies, according to the filing.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.