HSI infiltrated Minnesota unions and advocacy groups and subpoenaed financial records without judicial review during Operation Metro Surge

On August 13, 2026, defense attorneys for the 15 Minnesota activists charged in June 2026 with conspiracy to impede federal officers publicly unsealed court filings revealing that Homeland Security Investigations, coordinating with the Department of Justice, ran two undercover surveillance operations — codenamed "Operation Puppet Master" and "Operation Whipple Shield" — during winter 2025-2026 as part of the broader Operation Metro Surge immigration-enforcement deployment. The surveillance reached far beyond the 15 eventual defendants: undercover agents posed as activists and infiltrated encrypted Signal chats, secretly recorded meetings at libraries, parks and churches, tracked vehicles and license plates of meeting attendees, and built facial-recognition dossiers using Clearview AI.

HSI used administrative subpoenas — issued by the agency itself rather than a judge — to obtain more than three years of financial and wire-transfer records from labor unions and advocacy organizations, including the Service Employees International Union, the Communications Workers of America, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, the Democratic Socialists of America, Voices for Racial Justice, and the Sunrise Movement — none of which has been charged with a crime. Prosecutors disclosed they hold roughly 20 terabytes of collected data, much of it unrelated to the charged defendants. Defense attorneys wrote that the collection was conducted "in secret and with no articulable criminal predicate," violating the First Amendment and the organizations' financial-privacy rights.

The investigation traces to a September 2025 memorandum in which President Trump directed the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to investigate "all participants" in anti-enforcement "conspiracies," expanding the definition of domestic terrorism to include acts such as "getting in the way of immigration enforcement." At a grand jury proceeding, HSI Special Agent Desmond Garcia testified that "no one is ever investigated or looked at or even researched on for First Amendment protected activities" and that every investigation had a "criminal predicate" — an account the defense motions directly dispute, arguing HSI "seemingly sought to manufacture a basis for prosecution where no crimes had been committed."

A coalition of the targeted organizations, including Education Minnesota, Minnesota 50501, MAPE, SEIU and the Minnesota AFL-CIO, said in a joint statement that they would not be "intimidated or divided by sham accusations or investigations."

Updates

2026-08-20 — Churches moved for contempt over church surveillance disclosed in filings [3, 4]

Plaintiff churches in New England Synod v. Department of Homeland Security (D. Mass., Judge F. Dennis Saylor) filed a notice of noncompliance asking the court to hold DHS in contempt for violating the case's February 13, 2026 preliminary injunction barring warrantless immigration enforcement at protected churches. The motion cites the Operation Metro Surge court filings: an undercover ICE agent attended and recorded a mixed martial arts class at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis in May 2026, and agents separately photographed and ran plates on vehicles outside the church in April. The injunction's protected-locations list, filed February 27, 2026, named five churches in Minnesota and Michigan — First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church (Roseville, Minn.), St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church (St. Paul), Zion Lutheran Church (Ann Arbor, Mich.), and University Baptist Church (Minneapolis) — each of which the motion alleges DHS surveilled despite the order.

2026-08-24 — Judge ordered DHS to justify undercover church surveillance or face contempt [5]

U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV ordered the federal government to explain why it should not be held in contempt for allegedly violating the court's February 13, 2026 protected-locations injunction, after the plaintiff churches moved for a contempt finding over the undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent who attended and recorded the May 28, 2026 martial-arts class at University Baptist Church. The order does not itself make a contempt finding; it requires the government to respond and justify its conduct.

2026-08-25 — New exhibits detailed "Operation Puppet Master" infiltration of Signal groups, a socialist meeting, and the Alex Pretti memorial [6, 7]

Attorney Kevin Riach, representing defendant Isaac Sant, filed more than 200 pages of additional undercover-agent reports and photos in the Minneapolis protester conspiracy case, naming the program "Operation Puppet Master" for the first time in filed exhibits. The new material showed undercover agents identified as "UCA 142" and "UCA 5022" (Special Agents Marquis and Cutbirth) joining a neighborhood "North MPLS Volunteers" Signal group, attending and voting at a February 9, 2026 Party for Socialism and Liberation meeting, and using chat-capturing software to record Signal group conversations. The agents' own reports found no evidence the groups intended violence toward ICE agents and case agents subsequently stopped attending the PSL meetings. The exhibits also included photographs of vehicles and license plates of meeting attendees and of mourners gathered at a memorial for Alex Pretti, one of two Minnesota residents killed while observing immigration enforcement operations earlier in 2026. Prosecutors reiterated they hold roughly 20 terabytes of collected data, not all directly related to the charged defendants.