IT WAS bad enough that the Trump regime took 15 people to court for exercising their rights to free speech during the murderous raids by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) personnel in the Upper Midwest state of Minnesota but now we know that, as they were taking them to court, they constructed an unprecedented spying operation directed at anyone opposed to these murderous Ice raids.

Hundreds or even thousands have been spied on and listed as what Donald Trump calls “enemies.” Activists say it was the biggest government operation ever set up for the purpose of crushing the rights of US citizens.

Targets of the spying included the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the trade union federation represents 13 affiliates in the state, and their allies. All are outraged by revelations of the widespread Trump spying on and infiltration of their activities in the days before and after the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Ice and Border Patrol agents hit the area with Operation Metro Surge early this year.

Such outrages “didn’t work in the 1950s for Joseph McCarthy… and they won’t work for Donald Trump,” declares Minnesota AFL-CIO president Bernie Burnham.

Dodgy documents

The revelations are in a trove of internal DHS memos, emails and quickie blank “administrative warrants” which agents could fill out on their own to justify their violent and vicious arrest, detention and deportation of migrants and their supporters.

During Operation Metro Surge, some 3,000 people were arrested and one died in Ice custody. Agents used a five-year-old boy on his way home from kindergarten as “bait” to draw out his family and arrest his father. The father was flown to an Ice prison camp in the US Deep South, held for weeks without charges or being allowed to talk with lawyers and later released after public pressure.

Images televised worldwide showed rampant and vicious violence against peaceful protesters and bystanders by Trump’s troops — whose bosses claimed they were looking for “antifa” leftist radicals. There is no organisation that goes by that name. It is a designation, anti-fascist, used by the administration to round up and arrest whomever it pleases.

Ice and Border Patrol agents shot and killed in cold blood two peaceful US citizen observers, Alex F Pretti, a Veterans Administration nurse and a local union member, and Renee Nicole Good, who was seated in her car. Agents wrestled Pretti to the ground, disarmed him, then shot him seven times.

But instead of investigating and arresting the agents who killed the duo, the government probed the protesters, charging 15 with “criminal conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer.”

One has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, while the other 14 await trial. Their lawyers uncovered the cache of internal communications. The New York Times reported the story on August 13.

The papers show Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Ice and the Border Patrol did not confine their spying on people peacefully assembling to protest the sweeps, which they all have the constitutional right to do.

Instead agents shadowed, snooped, spied upon and infiltrated meetings of many more people and groups whom the Republican Trump regime believes oppose its policies, are sympathetic to migrants, or both. Targets included the Communications Workers, the Service Employees and three of its local union branches, Education Minnesota, and the state AFL-CIO union federation, plus the Sunrise Movement, Black Lives Matter and other organisations.

Besides internal communications about what the peaceful protesters planned, the agents also seized Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) financial records, the local newspaper Minnesota Reformer reported. That secret seizure violates the US constitution’s first amendment and the unions’ “right to financial privacy,” attorneys for the 14 defendants said. Even the judge overseeing the case against the 14 said Ice went too far.

“I’m inferring that not every bit of evidence was necessarily gathered pursuant to a warrant,” US District Judge David Schultz said in an earlier hearing, the Minnesota Reformer reported.

The disclosure may reignite the debate over the future of Ice and other Trump troops he’s sent on indiscriminate round-ups in big cities, most of them — not coincidentally — Democratic Party-run, such as the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Other prime Trump targets are Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon and Washington, DC.

Spies and lies

It certainly reignited Minnesota union outrage over Trump’s troops and their violence. Some analysts compared the DHS actions now to FBI director J Edgar Hoover’s infamous secret Cointelpro (Counterintelligence Programme) operation against Vietnam war dissidents, including members of Congress, and black rights groups in 1969-71.

Minnesota AFL-CIO president Burnham compared Ice’s surveillance, snooping and infiltration this year to the “Reds under the bed” Joe McCarthy era of the 1950s right-wing orchestrated Red Scare.

There were mass demonstrations, including union members, in support of the 14, on July 1.

“Instead of holding federal agents accountable for shooting and killing Renee Good and our union brother Alex Pretti, or addressing the dangerous and deadly conditions within immigration detention facilities, the Trump administration continues to weaponise our federal government to intimidate our unions, our communities, and anyone who peacefully opposes their radical authoritarian agenda,” Burnham said.

“The Minnesota AFL-CIO and several of our affiliated unions are being targeted simply because our state’s labour movement stood in solidarity with our immigrant union members and neighbours when our state was under siege this past winter.

“Minnesotans and most people across our country have rejected this administration’s attempts to demonise immigrants. They are now bringing back McCarthyism to paint unions and organisations that advocate for workers and families as threats to the nation.

“It didn’t work in the 1950s when Joseph McCarthy accused anyone he didn’t like of being un-American and it won’t work for Donald Trump.”

Latino advocacy group UnidosUS — formerly La Raza Unida — drafted a joint statement from labour, community, activist and religious groups denouncing DHS and the revelations about its surveillance, spying and infiltration.

Signatories included the state AFL-CIO, Education Minnesota, the state’s joint AFT-NEA affiliate, the Service Employees, two of its local branches and SEIU Minnesota-Iowa Health Care, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, the Minneapolis Regional Labour Federation, Minneapolis Starbucks Workers United, the St Paul Federation of Educators, two United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local branches and Unite HERE trade union Local 17. More signatories are expected.

“Hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans took action together, including constitutional observation, sharing food, filing legal briefs, protecting kids on their way to school, and marching in sub-zero weather to protect our neighbours and restore the rule of law,” the joint statement declared.

“Minnesotans’ organised, peaceful response protected our neighbours, defended constitutional rights, and constrained abuses of federal power, showing what Minnesotans can accomplish when we act together.

“Around the country, the Trump regime’s weaponised DOJ [US Department of Justice] is lashing out desperately in hopes of intimidating people and organisations that have shown the power of communities acting together to challenge abuses of government power and defend democracy. They are doubling down on their lies.

“Minnesotans have already proven we won’t cave to bullies. We know the power we have when we organise and act together, and we’ll continue using that power to defend our neighbours and our freedoms,” they vowed.

This article is republished from peoplesworld.org.