Fifteen people in Minnesota were charged with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers over their response to a controversial and deadly immigration enforcement crackdown in the state earlier this year.
The US attorney for Minnesota, Daniel Rosen, and the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Minnesota, Michael McCarthy, announced the charges at a press conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday.
The prosecutors allege the defendants were part of two Minneapolis-based “antifa” groups that “violently oppose immigration law enforcement”. The indictment names the two groups as Direct Action Minnesota and Black Cat Worker’s Collective, which it described as a subgroup.
Of those charged, 12 people were arrested on Tuesday and one was already in custody on other federal charges, according to officials, who said two remain at large.
Chaotic scenes erupted outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis on Tuesday, where some of the defendants made their first appearance on Tuesday. Protesters clashed with federal agents, who deployed teargas and pepper spray as they tried to disperse the crowd, according to video footage and witnesses.
Earlier in the afternoon, a group of dozens of people gathered to speak out against the charges, including Nekima Levy Armstrong, who was charged in a separate case involving a protest at a church. Signs among the crowd carried messages such as “stop FBI entrapment” and “protesting is not a crime”.
The new charges come as other cases from the federal government against protesters have fallen apart. The US attorney’s office’s track record with charges filed related to the crackdown, which was known as “Operation Metro Surge”, was the subject of media questions during the press conference. MPR News noted that the office has so far dropped 18 of its 36 prior cases, including one where a judge called a charging document a “false affidavit”.
With these new charges, Rosen said, “the evidence will prove it all out”.
Rosen showed social media posts and videos of a couple of the people indicted to underscore the allegations that they intended to impede law enforcement. In one video, a man declares he is antifa and discusses bringing guns to a demonstration. He showed another post of a defendant saying people needed to “become ungovernable”.
Antifa, which is short for “antifascist”, is not a specific group, but rather a decentralized movement, but last fall, the Trump administration categorized “antifa” as a “domestic terror organization”. Rosen did not define what “antifa” was, saying it went “beyond the scope” of today’s indictment.
At the demonstration, Bruce Nestor, a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, spoke to the crowd, saying: “What’s wrong with being ungovernable?” Nestor described the charges as “thought crimes” and an “act of political retribution” designed to quell dissent.
Rosen did not answer repeated questions about whether any agents or officers were injured by the defendants. The indictment does not allege officers were injured, though it mentions kicking a federal vehicle and knocking notes from an agent’s hands.
“Whether or not they actually at the end of the day caused bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious crime,” he said.
The Trump administration sent in thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota starting in late 2025, in part predicated on fraud allegations against Somali residents. The crackdown led to protest and a broad community response, from people monitoring agents to providing food for those staying home. Agents killed two people – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – in the streets, leading to further protest.
The agents who killed Good and Pretti have not faced charges. Rosen said during the press conference that the killings were under investigation, and charges could be possible.
The charges are the latest attempt by federal prosecutors to crack down on opposition to immigration enforcement.
Rosen also alluded that there could be more charges as they continue investigating response to the Minnesota crackdown. “If you are actively conspiring to impede law enforcement … you ought to go on the assumption that we’re watching, and we’ll get you,” he said.
The indictment mentions rapid response networks, which came together to track immigration agents’ vehicles as they were arresting people around the state. It also discusses how defendants used the encrypted chat app Signal to coordinate among people who were monitoring activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Rosen called these tactics “stalking” and noted how one of the defendants followed an agent from the federal building in St Paul to western Wisconsin.
It cites activities at the federal Whipple building in St Paul, where immigration agents were headquartered, saying the defendants set up “hard” and “soft” blockades to impede agents’ abilities to do their jobs. These hard blockades consisted of debris, vehicles or physical items, while soft blockades included people lined up with shields.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration secured its first successful conviction on the basis of “antifa” terrorism in the Prairieland case in north Texas, following a non-fatal shooting at a 4 July 2025 noise demonstration, in a case with 22 defendants across federal and state charges.
The Minnesota defendants do not currently face terrorism charges. Rosen said the indictment filed on Tuesday reflected charges that the office has the evidence to convict over.
In Spokane, Washington, three activists were convicted of conspiracy charges over an anti-ICE demonstration. The federal government also charged six people in Illinois with conspiracy over a protest at the Broadview detention facility, though the government later dropped the charges amid claims of prosecutorial misconduct.
Kat Abughazaleh, one of the six charged at Broadview, noted on Bluesky that the Minneapolis charges mirror the ones she faced.
“We need to be asking how they got this indictment. And as charges (hopefully) get dropped, we must remember the process is the punishment,” she said.
Nearly 40 others, including journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, face federal charges over a protest at a church in St Paul, Minnesota, where a pastor reportedly worked as an ICE official. Local prosecutors declined to charge the protesters.
