The Signal username “peanutbutterjelly” blended in among the silly monikers used by fellow members of Minneapolis chats dedicated to protesting immigration agents during the government’s aggressive winter deportation campaign. She attended an “upstander” training and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement planning meetings and regularly messaged with others doing the same. “…v interested in the financial organizing piece (I like numbers and data) & marrying that together with propaganda so would love to work on both sides of these groups!!” she messaged a group of activists in a chat called “art/money/comms club.” But peanutbutterjelly wasn’t interested in advancing the group’s aims. She was actually undercover agent 9843, a Department of Homeland Security officer ingratiating herself into the world of anti-ICE activists, looking for evidence of crimes.
Agent 9843 was just one arm of the broad surveillance campaign launched by the federal government during Operation Metro Surge, focused on “identifying and disrupting sophisticated, organized campaigns supporting and engaging in” violence, destruction of property, intimidation of federal officers and employees, and attempts to impede federal operations, according to a synopsis of the case in internal Department of Homeland Security documents, which are now part of court records in the case of 15 Minnesotans charged with conspiracy to harm or impede federal agents.
The documents highlight the vast surveillance dragnet the federal government created alongside the immigration crackdown. Which means even as immigrants were being rounded up and deported and people of color routinely racially profiled, the thousands of Minnesotans who sought to help them face consequences of their own – they’ve been swept into a burgeoning surveillance state.
“ICE is committed to protecting the public’s constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, while carrying out its law enforcement mission,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in response to emailed questions from the Reformer.
Undercover agents’ attendance at publicly-advertised meetings, or in large group chats, is legal – people in those settings have no expectation of privacy, said Jessica West, director of the First Amendment Activism clinic at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Private companies, including telecommunications firms and financial institutions, generally share users’ information with the government upon request, given that most terms and conditions agreements allow for such sharing, West said.
But, if agents were to search protesters’ phones without a warrant, using some of the spyware tools immigration agents have access to – that would be illegal, and the evidence not admissible in court. No evidence has emerged in court to suggest that agents used such tools to spy on defendants. They did use technology to record messages in Signal chats that agents joined on their undercover phones, according to court documents.
It’s lawful under certain circumstances for the police to make arrests, to use crowd control weapons, to charge people with crimes, to seek information, to go to people’s houses and knock on their doors and ask questions, said Kevin Riach, an attorney for one of the 15 Minnesotans charged with conspiracy to harm or impede federal agents.
“But if the purpose is to chill someone’s First Amendment speech, to prevent them from exercising their First Amendment rights – then it becomes illegal,” Riach said.
West, the First Amendment lawyer, said the extent of federal surveillance d
