Washington, D.C. — Newly released documents reveal that the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security spent the first half of this year building a surveillance dossier on Minnesota’s labor and climate movements. The agency subpoenaed years of bank records from the Sunrise Movement, SEIU, and the Communications Workers of America, embedded undercover agents in activists’ Signal chats, and tracked churchgoers’ license plates to build personal profiles on people who had committed no crime, all while the Border Patrol agents who killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti faced no scrutiny. Prosecutors went on to tell a grand jury, without evidence, that 18 organizations were part of a “criminal conspiracy.”
In response, Congressional Integrity Project Spokesperson Jeremy Funk released the following statement:
“Donald Trump and his government have been running a warrantless mass surveillance program that would make J. Edgar Hoover blush. They’ve spied on churchgoers, seized years of financial records from labor unions, and planted undercover agents inside group chats, all targeting Americans who broke no laws. Their real offense was opposing this administration’s extrajudicial street killings in Minneapolis. But instead of scrutinizing the agents doing the killing, DHS turned its investigators against the unions and civil society groups that protested them, building a political dossier on peaceful dissent. If Congressional Republicans are too cowardly to investigate this blatant abuse of power and attack on Americans’ free speech, Democrats will do it in January.”
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