Federal prosecutors charge 15 people with impeding agents during Minnesota immigration crackdown

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Federal prosecutors have charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year, accusing them of coordinating efforts to block arrests and deportations as part of a conspiracy against the U.S. government.

The monthslong investigation focused on members and associates of “Direct Action Minnesota,” a left-wing coalition of protest groups that played a role in the “surveillance, operational planning and rapid mobilization against law enforcement," Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen said.

Rosen said some of the defendants self-identified as “antifa,” an umbrella term for a loose movement of militant left-wing activists that President Donald Trump has labeled a domestic terror group.

Their actions included “stalking” U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents, throwing blocks of ice at their vehicles and setting up blockades around federal buildings. Rosen declined to say whether any federal agents were injured as a result.

“Whether or not they actually, at the end of the day, cause bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious federal crime,” he told reporters.

Twelve people were arrested Tuesday, two remain at large and one is already in custody, Rosen added. Information about their attorneys was not immediately available.

The Trump administration's “Operation Metro Surge" brought thousands of federal agents to the Twin Cities, setting off mass protests and leading to the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens.

During the surge, convoys of agents in unmarked SUVs traveled through neighborhoods, at times banging down doors, waiting outside schools and demanding residents produce proof of citizenship.

A sprawling network of outraged Minnesotans — primarily organized through anonymous neighborhood messaging threads — quickly formed, with ordinary citizens and activists using whistles and car horns to call attention to the masked, heavily armed agents.

At the time, border czar Tom Homan indicated that federal authorities were probing “the organization and funding of the attacks on ICE.”

“They’ll be held accountable,” he said. “Justice is coming.”

Last September, Trump signed an order classifying antifa as a domestic terror organization and directing federal agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle” its affiliates and funders.

Democrats and several First Amendment groups have raised issue with the designation. While the federal government may designate foreign terror groups, there is no formal mechanism to apply the same label to domestic groups.

Trump has long invoked the term against a range of political opponents, including peaceful protesters without anarchist-leanings.