Prosecutors on Tuesday charged 15 people with conspiring to impede federal immigration agents who carried out a massive enforcement campaign in Minnesota this year, according to court documents.
Some are charged with additional offenses including solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assaulting a federal officer and destruction of government property. Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced the charges at a Tuesday morning news conference.
Rosen said the actions of the 15 people charged went beyond peaceful protest and constitutionally protected free speech.
“These defendants are not being charged for what they said, but what they did. They all joined an agreement, a conspiracy, to interfere with lawful immigration enforcement operations. The conspiracy was not to interfere with their voice, but by force,” Rosen said.
Twelve of the 15 people indicted were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents Tuesday morning, Rosen said. One, Kyle Wagner, was arrested in a February raid in south Minneapolis. Two more remain at-large, Rosen said.
According to the indictment, the defendants are members of a group called Direct Action Minnesota, which describes itself as a coalition of people engaged in community defense during the federal immigration operation.
Much of the indictment focuses on Direct Action Minnesota’s group chat on Signal, a messaging platform known for being private and secure that was used by many rapid response groups during Operation Metro Surge.
The charges specifically allege that members of Direct Action Minnesota tried to block ICE agents’ movement to and from the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Jan. 23 and March 1.
Rosen did not answer questions from reporters about any specific physical assaults by the defendants against federal agents. He shared a video in which Wagner called on his followers to “get your [expletive] guns and stop these [expletive] people,” but declined to say if Wagner or any of his social media followers had actually threatened agents with firearms.
Federal prosecutors have previously charged 36 Minnesotans with assaulting or impeding federal agents during Operation Metro Surge, but many of those cases have since been downgraded and at least 15 have been dismissed, court records show. Rosen told reporters Tuesday he doesn’t believe those cases have failed and said more charges could come.
“If you are actively conspiring to impede law enforcement, actively conspiring to commit the acts that today’s indictment alleges, you ought to assume that we’re watching you and that we will get you,” Rosen said.
The charges come after Operation Metro Surge sent thousands of federal immigration officers to Minnesota earlier this year. During the operation, federal agents shot three people, killing two and injuring one. The operation caused widespread protests across the state and country.
Minneapolis City Council Member Jason Chavez told Sahan Journal he received many calls Tuesday morning reporting that community members who observed ICE activity were being arrested by federal agents in south Minneapolis.
“These are our neighbors who have literally put everything on the line to protect our immigrant community, so it’s very sad to see what’s happening today,” Chavez said.
Dozens of protesters rallied outside of the federal courthouse building in Minneapolis on Tuesday morning. They called the arrests a “naked political attack” by President Donald Trump over resistance to his administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota.
“We condemn the U.S. Attorney’s Office here, who have carried out these political prosecutions. They have acted on marching orders directly from Donald Trump and we’ve seen their prosecutions fail already,” said Anna Hall, a criminal defense attorney and member of the National Lawyers Guild. “They charge without sufficient evidence, they have brought cases on false testimony and they’ve been forced to drop cases already.”
Activist and civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, who herself is facing federal charges for entering Cities Church during a protest in January, echoed Hall, calling the arrests “trumped up charges,” and urging the crowd to support the protesters arrested Tuesday morning.
“For the 15 people who were arrested this morning for standing up, we have to continue to stand up for them,” Levy Armstrong said. “They put their necks on the lines, they put their bodies on the lines, they put their jobs on the line to stand up for freedom, justice, and equality.”
Emily Phillips, a member of MN50501, a statewide nonprofit dedicated to protecting democracy, told Sahan Journal she woke up to her phone “blowing up” on Tuesday morning. Phillips said she has observed ICE activity with multiple people who have since been indicted. She worries she could face arrest as well.
During Operation Metro Surge, she said she and other observers would follow ICE agents in their cars as they patrolled public streets, which Phillips said is legal. They also helped get protective gear to observers including goggles and gas masks to protect them from chemical irritants federal agents deployed.
“They haven’t been planning on hurting anyone, that’s never been the goal of anything in our movement,” she said. “And so the things that they’re saying in this indictment obviously are incredibly just false and made up.”
Minneapolis resident Lizzie Rose, 42, who was charged in January for assaulting a federal agent but has since had the charges dropped, told Sahan Journal that when she heard about the arrests this morning, her first thought was “Are they going to come for me again?”
Speaking at the rally Tuesday, she told the crowd to continue using their voice.
“They want you to shut up, they might put you on the DHS website, they might do all of these things but in reality, when this ideally ends, we’re going to know we’re here for the right reasons and that we did the right thing,” Rose said.
In a statement, the ACLU of Minnesota said the organization is monitoring and investigating the situation and that the prosecution of observers and protestors “should be carefully scrutinized for retaliatory motives.”
“Prosecution of a small number of people as punishment for exercising their First Amendment rights can chill people from exercising those same rights,” the statement reads in part. “Given this administration’s history of misrepresenting the facts regarding their conduct toward observers and protestors during Operation Metro Surge, Minnesotans should demand transparency and reserve judgement until we fully understand the facts in this case.”
Charges detail federal surveillance of private chats
The 96-page indictment unsealed Tuesday makes clear that federal agents had no problem accessing encrypted messaging platforms used by the defendants and others who were tracking ICE activity during the surge.
The vast majority of the indictment quotes directly from Signal chat groups allegedly used by the defendants from January through May to coordinate protest actions. Prosecutors contend the defendants were attempting to prevent immigration enforcement through “force, intimidation and threats.”
The indictment does not document any injuries to federal agents caused by the accused. Two of the defendants, William Morgan and Natasha Rakotz, are charged with assault on a federal officer. Rakotz is accused of brake checking and swiping an ICE agent near the Whipple Building in a move prosecutors say caused a crash.
Morgan is alleged to have knocked papers out of an ICE agent’s hand during a south Minneapolis arrest on May 15. Morgan is also charged with destruction of federal property for kicking an ICE vehicle at that incident.
Defendants Issac Sant and Morgan were also charged with interstate stalking for allegedly following an ICE agent to his home in Hudson, Wisconsin.
The majority of the government’s case stems from two coordinated protests actions intended to block access to and from the Whipple Building on Jan. 23 and March 1.
Prosecutors allege that the defendants used Signal and social media to plan and spread the word about actions intended to prevent ICE operations. The indictment includes pages of messages planning for an action to blockade roads near the Whipple Building, which involved activists buying a trailer off Facebook Marketplace that was flipped in the middle of the road and passing out homemade plastic and wooden shields distributed to protesters.
The defendants are accused of playing different roles in planning the protest. Cameron Kennedy is alleged to have bought the trailer flipped in the road and to have rented a U-haul that was used to transport shields to the Whipple Building.
“ICE was totally boxed in for half an hour and inconvenienced all morning,” Sant allegedly wrote in a Signal group after the blockade on Jan. 23, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors allege they organized a similar protest on March 1 in coordination with other groups. Four defendants are accused of distributing debris meant to block roads near Whipple that day, including welded metal beams known as Czech hedgehogs.
The indictment does not identify any injuries to local or federal law enforcement at either action. It describes instances where unidentified people threw ice or rocks at government vehicles.
Federal investigators appeared to have easy access to multiple Signal chats used by the defendants, and also quote directly from statements made at planning and post-action meetings throughout the indictment.
Protesters clash with federal agents in St. Paul
After charges were announced, about 80 activists converged on the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in St. Paul on Tuesday afternoon where the defendants were making their first court appearances.
That led to a seesaw at the entrance with U.S. Marshals guarding the building. As the clash escalated, federal agents deployed chemical agents against the crowd.
Inside the courthouse, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Docherty heard the defendants in batches as they made their first appearances. Friends and supporters overflowed the courtroom and spilled into the lobby.
Docherty called it “a bridge too far” to hold detention hearings for the defendants and released them with just two conditions: they cannot talk to their co-defendants in the case, and they cannot protest on federal government property.
“We are far from the only ones who are going to experience this,” Cameron Kennedy told reporters outside of the courthouse shortly after he was released. “We are just the tip of the iceberg with this and they are definitely trying to come after people more for political reprisal.”
Kennedy said he was in bed at 6 a.m. on Tuesday when 12 armed federal agents burst down his door, showed him a warrant then arrested him. He said he’s not concerned about the charges, citing similar charges against protesters and observers nationwide earlier this year that have since been dropped.
His real concern is a resurgence in ICE operations in Minneapolis, he said.
“They won’t go away if we become quiet or we become docile, that’s when they start to take control again,” Kennedy said. “We need to get loud, we need to get into the streets and we need to resist them.”
