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Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional spying operation carried out by ICE against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond.

Records revealed during discovery uncover the inner workings of the domestic terrorism investigations, running under the names Project Whipple Shield and Operation Puppet Master, authorized by the controversial National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.

NSPM 7 instructs federal law enforcement to use every tool available against organizations and people who criticize the administration's policies and espouse "anti-Christian" ideas. The full scope and extent of the investigations it authorizes remains unknown.

One attorney in the Minnesota case directly compares the DHS-run campaign to the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, which unconstitutionally surveilled, infiltrated, and blackmailed racial justice, civil rights, and anti-war movements between the 1950s and the 1970s.

Dueling motions in the case over discovery of DHS’s surveillance program reveal that personnel with Homeland Security Investigations—one of ICE’s two components—repurposed funding mechanisms and investigative tools for serious criminal probes and turned them on domestic dissenters.