An undercover agent wore a wire to a self-defense class at a Minneapolis church; another compiled dossiers on protesters after an evening service.
MINNEAPOLIS —
Newly surfaced court filings show the Department of Homeland Security ran a far more expansive covert surveillance operation during last winter’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota than previously known, secretly recording meetings held at churches, libraries, restaurants and schools across the Twin Cities, according to reporting based on the documents.
The disclosures emerged as part of a motion filed in federal court in an ongoing conspiracy case against protesters who had demonstrated against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the filings, an undercover DHS agent attended a meeting of ICE protesters held at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville in February, recorded the license plates of people who attended, and compiled dossiers containing their names, home addresses, and information about their families and employment.
The Rev. Steve Sylvester, the church’s interim pastor, learned of the surveillance and told his congregation from the altar on a recent Sunday morning. “It feels weird,” Sylvester said. “It feels like I’m living in 1950s Eastern Europe. I don’t know that it feels frightening or daunting. It just feels completely out of place and inappropriate.”
Prince of Peace was far from the only site swept into the operation. The filings show federal agents secretly recorded gatherings at community spaces well beyond protest organizing, including a self-defense class held at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis this past May, where an undercover agent reportedly wore a wire. Cody Sanders, the church’s interim pastor, said he learned of the agent’s presence only recently.
“I do imagine people will look over their shoulder a little more and wonder, ‘Is there someone here who’s trying to gather information?’” Sanders said, describing how the revelation has changed the way his congregation now views its own gatherings. “Or when they see a strange car in the parking lot.”
Beyond the church surveillance, the court filings describe DHS subpoenaing the financial records of labor unions active in the region and building dossiers on individuals who attended a separate church gathering unrelated to the protest case, according to the documents. The full scope of the operation, including how many sites were surveilled and how the collected information has been used, remains unclear; the filings surfaced only because they were relevant to a single pending criminal case, raising the possibility that other surveillance conducted during the same period has not yet come to light.
DHS has not offered detailed public comment addressing the specific tactics described in the filings. The revelations arrive amid a broader national debate over the scope of federal immigration enforcement authority and the extent to which agencies have relied on covert methods, informants and financial subpoenas to monitor civic and religious organizations connected to immigration advocacy.
For congregants and community members named in the filings, the disclosures have reframed ordinary civic activity — a self-defense class, a protest planning meeting, a Sunday service — as potential surveillance targets. Pastors at both churches said their initial reactions ranged from surprise to anger, and that they now face the task of reassuring members that community spaces remain safe while acknowledging they can no longer be certain who is in the room.
The case that surfaced the filings remains pending, and further disclosures are possible as the litigation proceeds. Civil liberties advocates have pointed to the documents as evidence that the scale of covert monitoring tied to last winter’s enforcement surge was broader than what was previously disclosed to the public, and are likely to press for fuller accounting of what data was collected, how it was stored, and whether it extended to other cities where similar enforcement surges have taken place.
The Twin Cities enforcement surge that prompted the surveillance was one of several such operations federal immigration authorities conducted in Democratic-leaning cities over the past year, and the tactics described in the Minnesota filings — undercover attendance at community meetings, financial subpoenas targeting labor organizations, and dossier-building on individuals with no criminal charges pending against them — raise the question of whether similar methods were deployed elsewhere without yet surfacing in public court records. For now, the Minnesota case offers the clearest documented look at how far that surveillance extended into ordinary civic and religious life.
Human-Directed AI Journalism — This article was produced under editorial direction and fact review by a human journalist, using AI-assisted drafting and research tools. The Navarro Report | navarro-report.com