DHS 'Operation Puppet Master' surveilled anti-ICE protesters, unions, Signal chats

Roughly 30 internal Homeland Security reports, filed in federal court by a defense attorney, describe a sprawling surveillance operation aimed at leftwing groups and protesters opposing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Launched in January under the codename ‘Operation Puppet Master,’ the effort deployed undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York, infiltrated activists’ Signal groups, made covert audio recordings, logged license plates at events, and pulled financial records — via administrative subpoenas and even a request to the New York Fed — from mainstream unions and nonprofits including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, the Communications Workers of America, the DSA, and the climate group Sunrise Movement. None of those organizations have been charged.

The records underpin a June indictment of 15 Minneapolis protesters accused of conspiring to ‘impede’ ICE, but the 94-page charging document alleges no injuries to specific officers and no serious violence. The investigation traces back to an executive order designating ‘antifa’ a domestic terrorist organization, and the paper trail shows agents doing more than watching: one posed as a construction worker offering to build items for ‘direct-action’ protests and volunteered that jail ‘did not bother him,’ conduct the defense characterizes as entrapment. Agents also lied when activists directly asked whether they were ICE.

The significance is less technical than institutional. Civil-liberties advocates, including a former FBI agent, note that DHS — not the FBI — ran a terrorism-framed operation against lawful protest and progressive organizing, using financial-intelligence tools normally reserved for actual terror financing. The infiltration of encrypted Signal chats and the surveillance of peaceful ‘de-escalation’ trainings underscore how quickly counterterrorism authorities and surveillance capabilities can be turned toward political dissent, raising questions about oversight, investigative discipline, and the criminalization of protest.