DHS Investigated Labor Unions and Activist Groups Over Minnesota ICE Protests in Disturbing Attack on Dissent

Newly released documents reveal that four days after Customs & Border Patrol agents in Minnesota shot and killed Alex Pretti in January of 2026, the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation – but not into the agents who shot Pretti. 

Instead, DHS began investigating major labor unions like SEIU and CWA, the environmental group the Sunrise Movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, and an activist collective called Direct Action Minnesota, all for allegedly providing support to activists in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where tens of thousands turned out to protest ICE raids this winter.

The inquiry was extremely broad, requesting years’ worth of financial records, and federal agents used a wide array of covert surveillance tactics, including undercover agents, the infiltration of Signal group chats, and recording meetings and activists’ comments.

Defending Rights & Dissent released the following statement in response to the news:

“The Department of Homeland Security’s investigation into Minnesota labor unions, a climate change organization, and other groups and activists who exercised their First Amendment rights in protesting ICE crackdowns is a disturbing, invasive, and utterly unjustifiable attack on freedom of expression and political dissent.

The inquiry comes amid President Trump’s escalating crackdown on freedom of speech across the United States. Last year, Trump issued NSPM-7, a directive which tramples the First Amendment in weaponizing the federal government to root out his political adversaries and cast all activism against the administration as “domestic extremism.”

Defending Rights & Dissent strongly condemns this investigation and all attempts by the Trump administration to intimidate ordinary Americans exercising their freedom of speech.”