On a recent Sunday morning at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville, Minn., Steve Sylvester, the interim pastor there, had an unusual announcement to make.
Standing at the altar, he told his mostly elderly congregation that the Department of Homeland Security had surveilled their church during the federal immigration enforcement surge that happened in the state last winter.
The revelation was part of a motion filed in federal court just a few days before the service, as part of an ongoing conspiracy case against ICE protesters.
According to government documents, an undercover DHS agent attended a meeting of ICE protesters at Prince of Peace in February. The agent captured the license plates of people there, and then compiled dossiers including their names, addresses, and information about their families and jobs, according to the motion.
"It feels weird. It feels like I'm living in 1950s Eastern Europe," Sylvester told NPR. "I don't know that it feels frightening or daunting. It just feels completely out of place and inappropriate."
He's far from the only person caught in the wide-reaching surveillance web spun by the federal government.
Surveillance at churches, schools and libraries
For months, the documents show, federal agents secretly made recordings of meetings held at churches, libraries, restaurants and schools around the Twin Cities. They infiltrated private group chats, sought the financial records of national labor unions, and gathered information on community members who had not been accused of any crimes.
"Quite honestly, it was breathtaking," says Rachel Levinson-Waldman, who directs the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "Just the scope of what was being revealed in terms of how deeply it had gone, how many government resources were being devoted to this."
Cody Sanders, interim pastor at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis, says his first reaction was surprise, then anger, when he heard that an undercover agent wore a wire to a self-defense class held at his church this past May.
"I do imagine people will look over their shoulder a little more and wonder, 'Is there someone here who's trying to gather information?' Or when they see a strange car in the parking lot," Sanders says. "I hope we can resist the kind of suspicion that this is likely to generate."
Sergio Manancero manages La Doña Cerveceria, a brewery in Minneapolis where an undercover agent attended a meeting in January, according to court documents.
"I would understand why they would send somebody to that meeting, considering it was open to anybody that wanted to come because they were probably trying to figure out whether or not protesters were going to do something more serious against their agents," Manancero says.
"Do I think the government spying on us in that way is maybe bad? Yes," he said. "Am I surprised that they did it? No."
Manancero says organizers at the event were planning a lawful ICE protest. In a way, he says, he finds it almost beneficial that DHS agents witnessed it firsthand to see that nothing suspicious was taking place.
During another meeting at a public library, an undercover agent allegedly told a person there that he worked in construction and could build items for more "direct action," and that he didn't mind going to jail.
Privacy and free speech concerns
Levinson-Waldman, of the Brennan Center, says the federal government has broad authority under the Fourth Amendment to gather information on people, though other laws do impose limitations. There isn't enough information yet to determine whether the surveillance in Minnesota was legal, she says.
Regardless, Levinson-Waldman says, "Just because something's legal doesn't mean that it aligns with people's sense of what is ethical or what they're comfortable with having the government doing."
She says the tactics described in the documents seem to break from decades-long norms and guidelines. They remind her of COINTELPRO, the domestic counterintelligence program run by the FBI, which began in the 1950s and ended in the early 1970s.
As part of that operation, agents conducted intense surveillance on organizations it deemed subversive, including the Communist Party, the Black Panthers and civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.
The abuses of that program, Levinson-Waldman says, led to a series of reforms, including tighter guidelines at the Justice Department on investigative techniques.
The government defended its actions in a court filing on Friday, saying it did not target the thousands of peaceful protesters in Minnesota.
Instead, it said it targeted the people who were ultimately charged in the conspiracy case. Prosecutors say they were planning activities not protected by the First Amendment, like setting up blockades at the federal building outside of Minneapolis that served as ICE headquarters during the surge.
According to the government, the surveillance conducted was "standard law enforcement practice."
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, says the investigative tactics described in the court motion also raise First Amendment concerns, because this type of surveillance can also sweep up people engaged in perfectly lawful activity.
As part of its investigation, the documents show, DHS obtained the financial records for several nonprofits and labor unions, including the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America. In its response, prosecutors said requesting these records was "within the authority" of the agency.
"These reports raise the question of whether the government is investigating crimes or investigating political movements," Terr says. "When officials are infiltrating political meetings, recording protesters' license plates and examining years of financial activities by these mainstream advocacy groups, it raises the question, do they have actual evidence of criminal activity here?"
One government document presented to grand jurors shows a PowerPoint slide depicting a web of 18 organizations with the label "The Conspiracy." A DHS agent testified to the grand jury that it showed other organizations the defendants in the conspiracy case were affiliated with, according to the motion.
They included a local teacher's union, a bicycle repair shop, and the Minnesota affiliate of the AFL-CIO, a large federation of labor unions. In a statement, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said the government is "bringing back McCarthyism."
In its response to the court motion, the government said that it did not actually argue that the AFL-CIO or any other organizations shown in the web were part of the conspiracy.
Terr says the image communicates a troubling idea: Be careful who you associate with.
"The consequences of that are that many Americans may be afraid to attend a protest, support an advocacy organization, because they don't want to become the target of a government investigation," he says.
In a statement, DHS told NPR it does not comment on the existence or status of ongoing investigations. The agency directed NPR to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota, which also declined to comment.
A hearing in the conspiracy case is set for this week.
Copyright 2026 NPR
