Dossier mode
Operation Puppet Master: DHS undercover surveillance of Minnesota anti-ICE protesters
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Surveillance State(s) hub.
Operation Puppet Master
During the 2026 immigration crackdown in Minnesota, Homeland Security went undercover on the protesters — embedding agents in meetings, subpoenaing a union's and a nonprofit's donors, and building dossiers on 18 left-leaning groups, many never accused of a crime. Not a leak. The government's own filings, produced in discovery.
DHS set out to map the funding and structure of named political organizations before it had identified a crime — and the record is on the government's own letterhead.
Elsewhere this hub tracks the vocabulary of the war on the left — the 'far-left terrorism' summit, the 'anti-extremism' project. This is that vocabulary put into practice: undercover agents in meetings, subpoenas to a union's bank, PowerPoint slides mapping the 'organizational structures' of socialist and labor groups. The conduct is graded FACT; the defense's First Amendment claim is carried as the pending argument it is. The government's own conspiracy case is given its place.
“These agents surreptitiously recorded dozens of conversations with ordinary people who were simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest.”
Riach says the agents 'created dossiers that are apparently now available agency-wide.' The conduct his motion rests on is documented in the government's own exhibits; whether it violated the First Amendment is the unresolved legal question a court has yet to reach.
DHS ran at least two undercover operations against the Minnesota protest movement, with agents embedded in meetings and recording them.
Court filings detail 'Operation Puppet Master' and 'Project Whipple Shield' — a third, 'Operation Keyhole,' is named in an opening report. Undercover Homeland Security Investigations agents attended community meetings across the Twin Cities, covertly recorded conversations, and obtained financial records. A June investigation report describes an agent embedding in an operational-planning group chat and recording a Sunrise Movement–Twin Cities meeting, logging tactics such as 'shaming and bullying ICE' and 'flooding their tipline.' Operation Puppet Master was opened four days after immigration agents fatally shot Alex Pretti as he filmed them detaining a woman. The record is the government's own, produced in discovery in the federal case against local activists.
HSI built a PowerPoint target list of 18 organizations — the DSA, ICE Watch, AFL-CIO chapters — and planned to map their funding before naming a crime.
A PowerPoint exhibit names 18 organizations that Homeland Security Investigations alleged were conspiring to interfere with federal immigration agents, among them Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, Minnesota ICE Watch, and AFL-CIO labor chapters. Government filings lay out plans to investigate the 'funding sources, organizational structures and predicate actions' of these groups — the order reversed from ordinary investigation: the named organizations came first, and the search for a specific criminal basis came after. That is the story, and it is on the government's own slide deck.
Eighteen named groups on one PowerPoint — a socialist chapter, an immigration-watch network, labor unions — selected as targets whose 'funding sources, organizational structures and predicate actions' would be investigated. The figure is the whole method in a single number: this is not eighteen crimes discovered and traced back to their organizers, but eighteen organizations chosen first, their books and donors then pulled, with the criminal predicate to be found later. Many were never charged with anything.
NOTUS-hosted exhibit 212-3; NOTUS
Agents subpoenaed the financial records of a union and a nonprofit — sweeping in members and donors never accused of a crime.
Agents subpoenaed wire-transfer information from the labor union SEIU and donation information from the nonprofit Voices for Racial Justice, pulling in members and donors who were never accused of anything. This is the same financial-dragnet tool documented elsewhere on this site — the acquisition of bulk financial records without an individualized predicate — here pointed at political association: who funds a union, who gives to a racial-justice group. The subpoenas are in the government's exhibits.
The operations ran under a September 2025 Trump directive that expanded the definition of domestic terrorism.
The surveillance was conducted under President Trump's September 2025 directive, 'Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,' which tasked DHS and the Justice Department with investigating individuals and groups under an expanded definition of domestic terrorism. The New York Times reported that Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh urged prosecutors to 'go big and go loud.' The expanded authority is the mechanism: an anti-terrorism mandate, aimed not at an act of violence but at the funding and structure of lawful political groups.
The defense argues the surveillance violated the First Amendment — a pending motion, not an adjudicated finding.
This is the defense's legal argument in a pending motion, and we carry it as exactly that. Attorney Kevin Riach argues that surveilling and building dossiers on people 'simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest,' without a criminal predicate, is unconstitutional. Whether a court agrees is unresolved — no judge has ruled. What is documented, and graded FACT above, is the conduct the claim rests on. We grade the constitutional conclusion SOME SMOKE because the argument is real and serious but the finding does not yet exist.
Where we draw the line — the method is documented; the government still has a case.
- Named organizations were selected first, their funding and structure mapped, their donors subpoenaed, their meetings recorded — with the search for a criminal predicate coming after. All of it graded FACT, from the government's own discovery filings.
- Labor unions, a climate group, and a racial-justice nonprofit were pulled into a domestic-terrorism inquiry alongside members and donors, none of whom were charged.
- That the defendants are innocent or the case fabricated. The United States has charged 15 people with conspiring to impede or injure federal agents, and that criminal case is real and ongoing — a reader can hold both truths at once.
- That a court has found a constitutional violation. The First Amendment question the defense raises is unresolved; we grade it SOME SMOKE and let the court decide the law.
The opening report accepted the first case on the basis of 'Operation Keyhole' — a third operation named but not described in the record, and what it actually covered, and it is a document no one has yet put on the table.
What 'Operation Keyhole' was, and what it covered, is referenced in an opening report as the basis on which the first case was accepted — but the operation itself is not described in the disclosed filings. Also unseen: how widely the agency-wide 'dossiers' on uncharged Minnesotans were distributed, and whether they are retained. Those records would show how far the dragnet reached beyond the courtroom.
Help us fill it →Why it matters.
This is the enforcement companion to the framing pieces on this hub. The 'far-left terrorism' summit and the 'anti-extremism' project supply the language that turns protest into a threat category; here is a federal agency acting on it, with subpoenas and undercover agents. It belongs in the Surveillance State(s) ledger for the plainest reason: an expanded 'domestic terrorism' authority, aimed not at violence but at the funding and structure of lawful political groups, is the exact mechanism by which dissent gets criminalized. We grade it to the documents and let the courts resolve the law.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenHow widely were the agency-wide 'dossiers' on uncharged Minnesotans distributed, and are they retained?
- OpenDid DHS or DOJ provide any on-record justification for investigating the funding and structure of named groups before a criminal predicate existed?