Court Records Detail DHS Undercover Operation Against Minnesota Anti-ICE Groups

Federal agents spent the winter inside Minneapolis anti-ICE networks, and the paper trail is now public because defense lawyers pried it loose.

DHS documents filed in court in the case of 15 Minnesotans charged with conspiracy to harm or impede federal agents describe a campaign aimed at "identifying and disrupting sophisticated, organized campaigns supporting and engaging in" violence, property destruction, intimidation of federal officers and attempts to impede federal operations. All 15 have pleaded not guilty. So have the defendants in a separate case over a protest at Cities Church.

What the records show

One DHS officer, identified in the filings as undercover agent 9843, used the Signal handle "peanutbutterjelly." She attended an "upstander" training and planning meetings and joined chats during Operation Metro Surge, the winter deportation push in the Twin Cities. In one chat she wrote that she was "v interested in the financial organizing piece."

Wired reports that discovery has produced dozens of reports, audio transcripts, emails, intercepted Signal chats, photographs and database queries. Defense filings tie the work to investigations labeled Project Whipple Shield and Operation Puppet Master.

The undercover money came from Operation Keyhole, a Homeland Security Investigations program that dates to 2008. According to the filings Wired reviewed, it was underwriting about a half dozen active undercover investigations in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area as of June 2026.

Defense attorneys argue the prosecution grows out of a broader nationwide effort. Wired reports that three former law enforcement officials who reviewed the filings told the magazine the case is almost certainly part of a wider intelligence operation that predates the Minnesota surge. One defense attorney compares it to the FBI's COINTELPRO. Those are the defense side's characterizations. No court has ruled on them.

Wired also points to National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, issued after Charlie Kirk's assassination in September 2025, as the authority behind the investigations. The magazine says the full scope of what it authorizes is unknown.

Where the law draws the line

Jessica West, director of the First Amendment Activism clinic at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, told the Minnesota Reformer that undercover agents attending publicly advertised meetings or large group chats is legal, because participants have no expectation of privacy there. She said telecom and financial companies generally hand over user data on request under their terms of service.

The problem starts elsewhere. West said warrantless searches of protesters' phones, using spyware tools, would be illegal, and the evidence would not be admissible in court. The Reformer reports that no evidence has emerged in court to suggest agents used such tools on defendants. Whether the surveillance as a whole was illegal is the kind of question that could shape the outcomes for dozens of defendants.

A DHS spokesperson told the Reformer that ICE "is committed to protecting the public's constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, while carrying out its law enforcement mission." The charged conduct is conspiracy to harm or impede federal agents. A separate account of the case says the public documents show no allegations of serious violence or injuries to ICE officers.

The same agency, other targets

The Minnesota material is one piece of a larger DHS footprint. In June, DHS directed ICE to help deport alleged noncitizen voters. Since September, armed, uniformed Homeland Security Investigations agents have been going door to door in several states to ask residents about their immigration status and whether they registered or voted, a CBS News investigation found.

DHS claims as many as 250,000 noncitizens could be illegally registered. Election experts dispute that figure. The Justice Department says 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud offenses since the start of the Trump administration, out of 227 million registered voters.

The operation has produced arrests. CBS News, in an article updated Oct. 22, reported that the Justice Department announced on a recent Monday that Homeland Security agents in California had arrested more than 20 green card holders over alleged illegal registration or voting. One was a 72-year-old man from Belize, taken from his home in his pajamas on charges that he voted illegally in the past four elections.

DHS defends the work. "HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found," a spokesperson said, adding that the aim is "ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders." Noncitizen voting is a crime, and enforcing that law is not controversial in itself.

The method is what draws fire. Eric Balliet, a 23-year HSI veteran who served under multiple administrations, said he never knew of an initiative that sent agents to private homes to verify voter eligibility. Jessica Marsden of Protect Democracy, whose group is suing over the door-knocking, said it looks "maximally designed to scare lawful voters from participating."

Capacity is growing

ICE has also sought to build more analytical muscle. Procurement documents describe a roughly $100 million program, ERO ONE, to place 142 intelligence personnel in more than two dozen cities and Washington, D.C. Contractors would produce "network, link and relationship" analyses of individuals and organizations. Jay Stanley of the ACLU called it "dangerously like the construction of an internal spying agency." The documents do not say whom ICE intends to target.

Separately, ICE has deployed more than 250 officers to Southern California for an operation expected to last 45 days, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke to The Daily Wire. DHS declined to discuss it, citing operational security and officer safety. The same sources say officers are working six to seven days a week under pressure to raise arrest numbers before the November midterms.

On Flock Safety's license plate camera network, reporting found more than 4,000 searches by state and local police for federal or potential immigration enforcement purposes, with ICE reaching the data through local departments and no formal Flock contract. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) and 33 other House Democrats wrote to Acting ICE Director David Venturella. They called warrantless access to location data "an unprecedented intrusion into the privacy of the general public."

The lawmakers asked for answers by Nov. 20, 2026.

The Fourth Amendment does not carry a party label, and neither does the question of how much domestic intelligence a single enforcement agency should be allowed to run.