The Next Step in Criminalizing ICE Protests Is Here

Edited by Sam Thielman

BUILDING SHIELDS. Constructing a Signal group chat and alerting those on it to the size of a police presence around an ICE staging ground. Asking for contributions to a mutual aid fund. Writing an article for CrimethInc. that reported on a confrontation between ICE and protesters. 

These are the alleged "overt acts" of a conspiracy of "force, intimidation and threats" to impede ICE activity in Minnesota, according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. Prosecutors charged 15 people and say others may soon be added. FOREVER WARS has uploaded the indictment here, so you can read it for yourself, outside the PACER legal-database's firewall. 

This is the latest turn of the ratchet in criminalizing resistance to ICE. If you thought the convictions of the anti-ICE demonstrators in Prairieland, Texas were egregious, this time, the Justice Department isn't even alleging proximate gunfire, as at Prairieland, nor any other actual act of violence. The most direct obstruction mentioned is the use of a truck to block a roadway and debris to block vehicular access to the Whipple federal building that ICE used as a staging ground for its operations in the Twin Cities. 

Nowhere in the indictment is there even an account of anyone being hurt as the result of any act by anyone accused. One person, Natasha Rakotz, is accused of side-swiping an officer's car, but no one is identified as injured. Another person indicted is accused of knocking a notebook out of an agent's hand and kicking a government vehicle "twice, causing dents."

All this occurs in the context of NSPM-7, the Trump administration's initiative to turn the War on Terror against the left. Call it Greg Bovino's revenge. In an incredible example of a serpent eating its tail, the indictment describes several of the indicted reacting to the White House Counterterrorism Strategy that vows to treat them as terrorists. "My new bio," one quipped, riffing off the White House-targeted ideologies, "anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist."

Perhaps the most shameless aspect of the indictment is its scandalization of activists who observe, track and disseminate information about ICE and police vehicles. This is standard cop-watch/ICE-watch activity, chronicled in much journalism from Minnesota in January, including from Kerry Howley at New York Magazine and Adam Serwer in The Atlantic. The indictment lambastes the practice of identifying "immigration and federal law enforcement vehicles and document[ing] identifying information, such as license plates, in databases." This, while ICE agents pull their phones out at protesters and sneer about putting them in protester databases that the Department of Homeland Security insists do not exist. 

(Except that Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons acknowledged in an April letter to Congress that ICE claims, in NPR's language, "wide latitude to collect information on individuals suspected of potential violations of law, including interference with ICE operations or officer safety matters, and maintains records on people who were never arrested.")

Similarly, other "overt acts" of conspiracy include forming what the indictment calls a "soft blockade" near Whipple. It describes some of the indicted people standing guard with shields. Not attacking officers or others—using shields in anticipation of protecting people from violence. The most damning quote the indictment presents, taken from a Signal chat law enforcement clearly obtained, reads: "ICE was totally boxed in for half an hour, and inconvenienced all morning…" 

There is also someone who posted in support of bringing guns to ICE protests after ICE executed Renee Good. Left unremarked upon: Minnesota is an open-carry state for gun owners with permits. The indictment quotes the alleged poster saying "Sorry but welcome to America 2026 where the Second Amendment is the only thing that's going to keep you f****** protected from literal f****** Nazi gun men that are killing innocent people in the street with impunity." Imagine the outcry in conservative media if a right-winger was indicted for posting something like that.  

Another overt act detailed: one of the indicted people allegedly wrote an anonymous dispatch for the anarchist collective CrimethInc. Never in the article does the writer describe themselves participating in the confrontations with ICE that they report in the article, though the indictment claims the alleged author verbally claimed to have done so at a later date. A second CrimethInc. article mentioned in the indictment, allegedly by the same author, describes the author getting shot in the face with a less-lethal round by an ICE agent. 

By charging conspiracy, federal prosecutors do not have to prove that a specific defendant committed a specific act, only that they aided in a conspiracy in which any particular member's actions can provide collective guilt. Yet even under that standard, the case, U.S. v. Sant et. al., implicates activity common in protest circles.

The indictment discusses a February 1 meeting, attended by a few of the indicted people, that discussed raising money for legal services for demonstrators taken into custody. It presents posts advocating for direct confrontation with ICE as crime, not speech. At another point, the indictment presents one of the defendants directly rejecting a discussion of placing "sharp shooters on the roof." At a third, it recounts demonstrators training with home-built shields, yet never presents them using the shields as an offensive weapon. (At worst, there's a discussion about using the shields to wedge through a police line.)

Instead, the indictment is heavy on the politics of the indicted. There are repeated mentions of self-identification as Antifa, antifascists, as well as advocacy of anarchism and (what the document calls) communism. There is extensive presentation in the indictment about how such protests get organized. The indictment scandalizes mundane details, like calling for safety marshals. There's a similarly-scandalized participation in an "anarchist speaking tour" where activists shared lessons learned. 

This is what the Justice Department seeks to criminalize. It seeks to present the network of people who resist ICE as a criminal conspiracy in waiting. Meanwhile, ICE literally executes people and its agents flaunt their impunity. 

This is going to be an important trial, easily as important as Prairieland. Shortly after the indictment was unsealed, officers outside the St. Paul federal courthouse fired chemical irritants at protesters outraged by the charges. Consider the tone set.

United States v. Sant et al by spencerackerman7502

I'LL BE AT the Urbane Arts Club in Brooklyn at 7 p.m. on June 30 to launch The Midnight Special, the new book by Colin Asher, one of my oldest and best friends, about incarceration through the lens of popular/roots music. It's an excellent book and I'm honored to be interviewing Colin about it. You should join us.