Federal officers broke into a south Minneapolis apartment complex and unit Thursday morning to arrest a man charged with cyberstalking who allegedly threatened to assault federal officers.
About 6 a.m., U.S. Homeland Security Investigations officers broke through the window next to the security door of Eat Street Flats, located on the east side of the apartment complex and away from the front door, to arrest 37-year-old Kyle Wagner.
According to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday and unsealed Thursday, Wagner used his social media accounts to dox a “pro-ICE individual” whom the complaint refers to as J.S.
The complaint alleges that Wagner published the phone number, birth date and address of J.S., who lives in Michigan.
The complaint also cites several inflammatory social media posts Wagner allegedly made against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), though it does not charge Wagner with any crime beyond cyberstalking and interstate communications, a common charge in federal cases.
“Today, HSI and [the U.S. Department of Justice] arrested Kyle Wagner, a self-identified Antifa domestic terrorist in Minneapolis who conspired to threaten, dox, and kill our brave ICE officers,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a prepared statement. “The lawlessness is over Minnesota, and if you threaten or lay a hand on law enforcement, you will face justice.”
Eat Street Flats is located near the intersection of Franklin and Nicollet avenues in the Whittier neighborhood. First Service Residential, the property manager for the apartment complex, didn’t return messages seeking comment for this story before publication time.
After breaking through the security door, officers walked upstairs and broke down the door of an apartment unit, according to Jose Piedra, one of the contractors who was tasked with boarding up the building Thursday morning.
When Sahan Journal arrived on the scene mid-morning, Piedra and others were cleaning up broken glass and boarding up the building. Piedra said the apartment unit upstairs is a mess, with things “scattered everywhere.”
“You can see they didn’t care,” he said of federal officers.
Raid comes day after federal force trimmed by 700
The incident occurred at around 6 a.m. and was partly captured on video by a bystander. The video, which was posted on Facebook, shows two federal officers in military gear inside the apartment building, walking up the stairs shortly after they broke into it. Shards of glass are still falling out of the window as they do so.
Later in the video, two more officers in military gear approach the side door. One reaches into the broken window to open the door from the inside and they let themselves in as bystanders yell at them.
Then, seven more officers walk up and let themselves in. All of the officers wore masks and camouflage gear. Some had insignia with the letters “DHS,” for Department of Homeland Security, on their uniforms.
The break-in raid came one day after federal officials announced they were withdrawing 700 immigration officers from Operation Metro Surge, still leaving about 2,000 more immigration officers than usual in the area.
It also comes two months into the Minnesota operation, which is the largest immigration crackdown in U.S. history. Federal authorities have said agents are arresting hardened criminals, but agents have been accused of arresting U.S. citizens and children, using a child as bait to capture his family, using excessive force on protesters and forcing their way into homes without proper warrants. Two Minneapolis residents, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were fatally shot in January during confrontations with federal immigration agents, prompting large protests in Minnesota and nationwide.
First Amendment implications
The charges against Wagner are coming out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Eastern Michigan, even though Wagner lives in Minneapolis. News of the charges quickly spread nationally Thursday, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt parading them to reporters in a Washington, D.C., news conference.
The complaint against Wagner cites several of his social media posts against ICE. They include him writing or saying:
- “We will identify every single one of them and we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. If it has to be done at the barrel of a gun, then let us have a little [expletive] fun.”
- “We are at [expletive] war.”
- “I’ve already bled for this city, I’ve already fought for this city, this is nothing new, we’re ready this time, ICE we’re [expletive] coming for you.”
- “Get your [expletive] guns and stop these [expletive] people.”
Brennen VanderVeen, a First Amendment attorney with the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that viewed in isolation, much of this type of speech is protected. That’s because it falls under hypothetical speech.
The classic example of this is a Vietnam War-era Supreme Court case where a man just drafted said if they gave him a gun, “the first man I want to get in my sights” was then-President Lyndon Johnson. The Supreme Court upheld this as protected, hypothetical speech.
“In today’s context, similar statements like, ‘I hope people kill ICE agents,’ ‘I really want to kill ICE agents’ — those types of statements without more [context] very well could be protected speech,” VanderVeen told Sahan Journal.
Doxxing is also not a specific category in the law and is generally legal, he added.
“The issue is how you got the information,” he said. “If you hack into a government database and then you release the information, that’s going to be a problem. But you are just aware of information and you’re sharing it, that’s not generally going to be a crime.”
Sharing someone’s personal information and attaching direct threats to it is where doxxing veers into illegality, VanderVeen said. In that case, VanderVeen said he sees Wagner’s alleged doxxing as “potentially threatening.” But the government will have to prove such, VanderVeen added. The government also appears to be using Wagner’s previous ICE posts, as well as pictures of him tattooed up with “an angry face,” to “paint a particular picture” of Wagner, he said.
