Rightwing extremists: Danger Danger

[Winehole23]

ICE is Trump's politicized secret police, trying to criminalize and suppress dissent and policy disagreement

Among the records revealed during the discovery process in these cases are dozens of reports, audio transcripts, emails, intercepted Signal chats, photographs, database queries, and more. They reveal the inner workings of the domestic terrorism investigations, running under the names Project Whipple Shield and Operation Puppet Master, authorized by the controversial National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.

Published following Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September of last year, NSPM 7 instructs federal law enforcement to use every tool available against organizations and people who criticize the administration's policies and espouse "anti-Christian" ideas. The full scope and extent of the investigations it authorizes remains unknown.

Defense attorneys for the Minnesota 15 claim that the prosecution stems from a broader nationwide surveillance operation aimed at opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. One attorney in the case directly compares the DHS-run campaign to the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, which uncons utionally surveilled, infiltrated, and blackmailed racial justice, civil rights, and anti-war movements from the 1950s through the early 1970s.

Dueling motions in the case over discovery of DHS’s surveillance program reveal that personnel with Homeland Security Investigations—one of ICE’s two components—repurposed funding mechanisms and investigative tools for serious criminal probes and turned them on domestic dissenters. Operation Keyhole, the HSI undercover program that bankrolled the Minnesota 15 prosecution, dates back to 2008. As of June 2026, it was underwriting a half dozen active undercover investigations in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.

Around 120 HSI agents, many drawn from specialized units across the country that have served as the leading edge of the administration’s militarized immigration enforcement operations, were assigned to the case—including 11 undercovers. They used highly invasive surveillance techniques, including the deployment of Reaper drones and Patriot Act tools usually restricted to money laundering and terrorism investigations. Undercover operatives also infiltrated churches in apparent violation of a court order.

At least 11 undercover agents working under Operation Keyhole infiltrated Twin Cities anti-ICE activists, participating in martial arts and know-your-rights trainings, marches, general strikes, and community meetings. They also infiltrated activists’ communications network for identifying possible undercover ICE vehicles and dispatching activists to tail them through the Twin Cities, and penetrated several activist group chats on Signal, transmitting their contents back to other HSI colleagues for analysis and eventual inclusion in the indictment.

Activist conferences as far away as Seattle, Michigan, Chicago, and New York City were placed under surveillance as part of the investigation, and HSI teams photographed and ran the license plates of every car parked in the lot of a meeting location or seen transporting activists. There is also drone footage from unarmed Customs and Border Protection Reaper drones of the activists moving around the Twin Cities area.

The undercovers were part of a much broader group of more than 50 HSI agents, including at least two dozen from HSI’s little-known Special Operations Group, that took part in the investigation and surveillance of the defendants, both digital and in-person. Feds with decades of experience on complex financial crimes, drug cartel investigations, human trafficking, and organized crime were pulled into the Minnesota 15 investigation.

“This operation does not seem in any way limited to Minnesota,” says Spencer Reynolds, a former DHS attorney and counterterrorism lawyer who now works at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “As we saw with the boots on the ground in the streets, with Greg Bovino leading CBP and Border Patrol special forces units on sweeping raids across the country, this is the intelligence and undercover investigative apparatus that is running in parallel to the door-kicking.”

Mike German, a retired FBI agent who worked undercover domestic terrorism cases for years before becoming a sharp critic of post-9/11 federal law enforcement, likens the Minnesota 15 case to federal law enforcement’s long history of suppressing left-wing social movements, including the CIA’s Operation MH/Chaos, which surveilled the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War for evidence of foreign influence. One difference is the sheer scale—this time, it’s bigger.

According to a 2011 book by former CIA officer Frank Rafalko, the CIA secret investigation into suspected foreign influence on the New Left and anti-Vietnam War movement had 42 officers working the case at its peak. Court records show 119 HSI agents worked on the Minnesota 15 case alone.

“Broad monitoring of social media, communications, and financial transactions are used to link an ever increasing number of people as potential subjects of investigation and prosecution,” German says. “These are exactly the kind of intelligence activities J. Edgar Hoover adopted to suppress the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s.”

spooky methods, no probable cause hearings or warrants

Do ents concerning financial records requested through the Treasury Department’s 314(a) su ious activity reporting program—created by the Patriot Act to enable speedy tracking of finances for terrorism and money-laundering investigations—show that the feds targeted records of 29 “subjects” during queries conducted on March 31, 2026.

HSI investigators used similar workarounds to warrants and grand jury subpoenas to obtain phone records for several journalists who covered Operation Metro Surge, as first reported by The Guardian. Court records show the feds used an administrative summons request reserved for violations of customs and taxation requirements, which does not fit the activity that made up the criminal charges filed by the Minnesota US attorney against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others.

https://www.wired.com/story/ice-is-r...in-us-history/

[Winehole23]

Riach, the defense attorney, says the HSI reports show the agency is complicit in what he called “the new COINTELPRO.”\


“What we saw during the immigration surges last year was that ICE is the administration’s paramilitary force, the projector of strength,” Riach says. “Here, we see that HSI are taking the FBI’s place as the investigative secret police—it’s the classic one-two punch of authoritarian regimes around the world.”