A teachers' union in Minneapolis is now on a chart the federal government showed a grand jury. So is the state's largest labor federation. So is the union that represents state workers.

None of them are accused of a crime. The chart was used to help build a criminal conspiracy case against 15 people — and the unions are on it anyway.

That is where things stand in Minnesota after court filings last week revealed how far the Department of Homeland Security went during Operation Metro Surge, the immigration crackdown that flooded the Twin Cities with federal agents this winter.

On Tuesday morning, the people on the receiving end of it stood outside Target's headquarters in downtown Minneapolis and said the same thing in different words: we are not backing down.

What the agents actually did

The tactics came out because a defense attorney for one of the 15 defendants filed them in federal court. The filings include reports written by undercover agents, copies of subpoenas, and descriptions of messages sent on Signal, an encrypted chat app.

Here is what those documents describe:

• Agents went undercover into meetings. They sat in on a meeting at a Minneapolis public library. They sat in on an anti-ICE meeting in Roseville. They wore wires and recorded people.
• Agents joined a private Signal chat used by residents tracking where ICE was operating.
• Agents infiltrated a church. The First Universalist Church of Minneapolis was one of the congregations where an undercover agent showed up to a meeting.
• Agents wrote down license plates of cars parked outside those meetings, ran the plate numbers, and built dossiers on the people who attended.
• Agents used artificial intelligence to hunt for photos of protesters online.
• Agents secretly pulled financial records from labor unions and nonprofits — including the Service Employees International Union, the Communications Workers of America, the racial justice group Voices for Racial Justice, and the climate group Sunrise Movement.

The surveillance programs had names. According to Fox 9's review of the documents, they were called Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield.

Read that list again and notice what is missing from it. Not one of those steps required anyone to be charged with anything. Undercover agents in a church. Bank records of a teachers' union. Dossiers built from license plates in a library parking lot.

The chart

The most revealing document is a diagram prosecutors showed the grand jury.

It places the Minneapolis Federation of Educators Local 59 — a teachers' union — alongside other unions, the ICE-tracking group Monarca, the Democratic Socialists of America, and a community martial arts group called "Left Jab," all drawn as part of one wide conspiracy. Fox 9 reported the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the largest union in the state, appears on the government's slide too.

Roughly 20 organizations are named by the Justice Department as part of an alleged conspiracy to impede and assault federal agents. Defense attorneys say the diagram links them with no evidence behind it.

Marcia Howard, the president of the teachers' local, had a short answer for being on the government's chart.

"Kinda chic to be on that list."

"Acts of retribution and intimidation"

Fifteen people were indicted in June on a charge of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. Three of them stood at Tuesday's press conference.

One was Gabriel Van De Water, an artist and community organizer. He drew the contrast that makes this story what it is:

"The (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Border Patrol agents who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been hidden away and protected, while DHS turns its attention towards spying on union members, civil rights organizations, churches and individuals who stood up for their community in whatever ways they were able."

Renee Good was a mother of three killed by an ICE agent. When a member of Congress was asked about it, he called it "a justified shooting" on the word of two unnamed officials — after clearer video had already contradicted the government's account. Alex Pretti was a nurse shot ten times by federal agents in Minneapolis. One congressman's response to that killing was to call it "a communist insurrection" and demand troops.

Nobody has been charged in either killing.

Rev. Jennifer Crow, the senior minister at the church agents infiltrated, put it plainly:

"These shams of political investigations — these are just acts of retribution and intimidation."

Homeland Security's answer, given to Fox 9, was that "HSI does not comment on the existence or status of specific on-going investigations, nor on investigative methods."

Bethany Winkels, the secretary treasurer of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, gave the response most people would: "It shouldn't be happening in America, it shouldn't be happening in Minnesota."

This is a pattern, not an accident

If this were the only time a federal agency had turned surveillance tools on people who criticized it, it would be alarming enough. It isn't.

A federal lawsuit filed in July alleges DHS used facial recognition on Americans who peacefully recorded immigration agents, followed them home, and stripped their TSA PreCheck and Global Entry. In August, a Wall Street Journal investigation found ICE is paying contractors millions to scan social media around the clock and using subpoenas to unmask Americans who criticize the agency — with nobody charged.

Now add unions to the list of things worth watching.

And that is the part worth sitting with. The federal government pulled the bank records of two national labor unions and put a teachers' local on a conspiracy chart — in the same year Republicans in Congress had a chance to stand up for union members and took a pass. When a bipartisan bill came to the House floor to restore collective bargaining rights that two executive orders had stripped from 84% of the unionized federal workforce, it passed 231-195 — and 195 Republicans voted no. The Senate has sat on it for eight months.

You cannot claim to be the party of the working man while your administration is subpoenaing the working man's union and your members are voting to keep his contract shredded.

What they're asking for

The organizers didn't gather outside Target headquarters by accident. They picked a Minnesota corporate giant on purpose, and asked Target and other Minnesota-based companies to use their political weight to demand accountability for what federal agents did here this winter.

"Every single corporation that claims to be here for the right reasons is going to have to show it through," Howard said.

ICE and Target did not respond to the Reformer's questions.

The unions in this story didn't do anything except stand with their immigrant members. For that, agents took their financial records and drew them into a criminal conspiracy diagram. The people who did the shooting are, in Van De Water's words, hidden away and protected.

That is the trade the government made. It's worth remembering who let it happen.

Source

Union members, activists defiant in the face of federal surveillance — Madison McVan, Minnesota Reformer, August 18, 2026. Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer. Additional reporting from the Reformer's review of the surveillance documents and Fox 9.