Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Trump’s Spaghetti-Against-the-Wall Indictment Against ICE Protesters — and How to Fight It

Trump’s indictment against ICE protesters in Minneapolis is part of an attempt to criminalize organizing as a “conspiracy.”

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice unsealed a federal indictment on Tuesday announcing hefty charges against 15 anti-fascist protesters for alleged actions taken in response to the brutal U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement surge in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The federal prosecutor in the case, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, warned that more arrests and charges could follow.

Once again, prosecutors are throwing extreme and overreaching charges at activists in a scrambling effort to criminalize organized, collective opposition to Trump’s most violent policies.

The Minneapolis indictment exemplifies the Trump regime’s escalating strategy: Criminalize whole political movements with claims of collective liability and “conspiracy,” and treat typical acts of protest, constitutionally protected speech, association, and political identification as criminal acts.

Call it the spaghetti-against-the-wall approach.

“Terrorist”: How ICE Weaponized 9/11’s Scarlet Letter

The indictment, Rosen said, is a part of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, initiative to target and prosecute leftists and anti-fascists as terrorists.

Minneapolis is not an incidental target for Trump’s Department of Justice. The city unleashed an oftentimes-inspiring response to the ICE crackdown: mutual aid organizing, confrontational protest, blockades, and strikes in response to brutality set a national example for how to fight back when federal agents descend on a city to kidnap our immigrant neighbors.

 “Conspiracy” to What?

The “conspiracy” in Minneapolis according to the government, involves purported antifa activists acting with the aim of impeding ICE operations and injuring officers. The indictment names no federal officer injuries, and only minor incidents of property damage — like a protester leaving a dent in an ICE vehicle from kicking it.

Among other pieces of evidence cited for the alleged criminal conspiracy are the most basic protest strategies, including self defense, nonviolent tactics, and First Amendment-protected activity.

How Did the Feds Get Into Anti-ICE Activists’ Signal Messages?

The use of encrypted Signal chats to communicate protest plans is cited again and again in the indictment.

The government points out that organizers employed phrases like “become ungovernable” — a liberatory slogan so common it has spread to cute animal memes.

Demonstrators are accused of building and advocating for the use of shields at protests outside an ICE detention facility — the sort of protests in which, in Minneapolis and nationwide, federal agents have beaten people and fired rubber bullets and tear-gas canisters directly at heads and bodies.

The indictment even claims that people tracking ICE vehicles and alerting others to their presence, as agents prowled neighborhoods looking for immigrants to kidnap, is evidence of criminal conspiracy.

That certain protest activities may have indeed impeded ICE in its efforts to ruin lives and whiten the country do not make those activities illegal. Minor violations and property damage may involve unlawful acts, but do not constitute a mass criminal conspiracy.

Certainly, none of it calls for unleashing the vast resources of the federal government against protesters. The Trump administration, however, has made its own strategy clear: Make the stakes of association with political........

© The Intercept