Operation Puppet Master: What the DHS Surveillance Records Show

Claims at a Glance

The Guardian article, published August 13, 2026, draws on court records filed by defense attorney Kevin Riach, who represents Isaac Sant, one of 15 defendants in an active federal criminal case. Those records include DHS internal investigative documents for an operation the agency called Operation Puppet Master. This fact-check rates five distinct claims separately, because each has a different evidentiary basis and a different legal status.

Background: Two Killings, One Crackdown

The story begins with three shootings in 18 days during Operation Metro Surge, a federal immigration enforcement campaign that ran through the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area from December 4, 2025 through February 16, 2026.

On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a community activist and mother, was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross while driving away from a confrontation near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue in Minneapolis.^[1] On January 14, Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was wounded by ICE agent Christian Castro.^[2]

On January 24, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs and member of the American Federation of Government Employees, was shot and killed by two Customs and Border Protection agents near West 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue. Pretti had been filming immigration raids and stepped between an agent and a woman who had been pushed to the ground. He was pepper-sprayed, tackled, and held down by approximately six agents when the fatal shots were fired.^[3]

Both Good and Pretti were U.S. citizens acting as citizen observers. Four days after Pretti's death, on January 28, 2026, Homeland Security Investigations (ICE's investigative arm) launched what it internally named "Operation Puppet Master."^[4]

Claim 1: HSI Undercover Agents Infiltrated Community Meetings, Signal Chats, and a Church Event

The specific surveillance activities described in the claim are confirmed by the DHS records. According to those documents, as reported by Talking Points Memo, HuffPost, KVRR, and Minnesota Public Radio:^[5][6][7]

• Community meetings: HSI undercover agents attended gatherings at churches, parks, libraries, schools, and union halls across the Twin Cities, compiling dossiers with photographs, addresses, employment records, and vehicle registrations of attendees.
• Signal chats: Agents were added to Signal group chats used to coordinate ICE observations and protest actions. The government later described terabytes of Signal chat content as central to the case.
• Church events: Undercover Agent UCA 9843 attended a gathering at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville and collected license plates from the parking lot. At University Baptist Church, a different agent lost a concealed body-worn audio recorder during a boxing training session.

The DHS records also reference a companion operation: "Project Whipple Shield," which predated Operation Puppet Master and was used in the same investigation.^[5]

The claim accurately describes the surveillance. The mention of "a church training event" is confirmed in substance, though the documented events occurred at two different churches rather than one.

Claim 2: DHS Subpoenaed Financial Records of SEIU, AFL-CIO, CWA, and Sunrise Movement

The administrative subpoenas for financial records, confirmed by multiple independent reporting outlets drawing on the court filings, were served on five organizations:^[7][8][9]

• Service Employees International Union (SEIU), national and Minnesota chapters; three years of wire transfer records requested
• Communications Workers of America (CWA), three years of financial records
• International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE)
• Sunrise Movement, three years of financial records
• Voices for Racial Justice, via PayPal and Venmo transaction records

The AFL-CIO, the country's largest federation of labor unions, was not among the organizations whose financial records were directly subpoenaed. Instead, HSI included the AFL-CIO in a PowerPoint slide presented to the grand jury, which alleged a "conspiracy" involving 18 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, and Veterans for Peace. The AFL-CIO's Minnesota affiliate later said it was "being targeted simply because our state's Labor Movement stood in solidarity with our immigrant union members."^[10]

This distinction is not merely technical. Being named in a grand jury presentation alongside a criminal conspiracy allegation, without any corresponding subpoena or charge, raises different First Amendment concerns than receiving a financial records demand. The claim's inclusion of AFL-CIO in the subpoena list overstates the financial surveillance while obscuring the grand jury presentation, which is arguably the more constitutionally significant detail.

The claim correctly identifies the domestic-terrorism-financing theory. DHS documents designate the investigation under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, the Trump administration's 2025 directive on domestic terrorism enforcement. The framing of labor unions and advocacy nonprofits as "domestic terrorist financing" targets is confirmed and documented; the error is in the specific list of subpoena recipients.

The 19 U.S.C. § 1509 Question: What Authority, Used How

HSI's authority for these subpoenas derives from 19 U.S.C. § 1509, the customs summons statute, which allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to compel records without a judge's authorization. The statute was written for customs investigations: verifying import duties, checking trade-compliance records, examining the books of importers and freight forwarders.

This authority has a documented history of expansive use. Beginning in 2019, HSI served eight administrative subpoenas on Western Union and Maxitransfers Corporation, obtaining 6.2 million financial records covering every transfer over $500 to or from five states and Mexico over six-month intervals. Those records, encompassing millions of people never suspected of wrongdoing, were fed into a database called the Transaction Record Analysis Center. Senator Ron Wyden began investigating in January 2022 and sent a formal complaint to the DHS Inspector General in March 2022.^[11][12]

Whether § 1509 lawfully extends from customs compliance investigations at one end to labor union finances and climate advocacy nonprofits at the other is a legal question currently pending before the court in this case. What is documented: HSI used the same statutory tool it deployed against money-transfer intermediaries to demand three years of financial records from organizations that have no customs function and whose connection to any criminal conspiracy the government is still litigating. That is a documented departure from prior practice; whether it is a lawful one is pending before the courts.

Claim 3: The Indictment — 15 Defendants, June 2026

The indictment, returned in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota and publicly announced by U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, charged 15 members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN) with the following counts:^[13][14]

• Conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, all 15 defendants
• Interstate stalking, Isaac Auman Sant and William Morgan (known as "Willow Tree")
• Interstate threats, Kyle Wagner
• Solicitation to commit a crime of violence, Kyle Wagner
• Assault on a federal officer, William Morgan and Natasha Rakotz (known as "Anuran")
• Destruction of government property, William Morgan

The conduct alleged for the two assault defendants is on the record in the DOJ press release. On May 15, 2026, Morgan allegedly arrived at an active HSI operation on Bloomington Avenue, approached an agent, knocked notes out of the agent's hand, and kicked the agent's government vehicle, causing dents. On May 18, 2026, Rakotz allegedly followed a federal immigration officer from the Whipple Building to the area of Highway 55 and Highway 5 in her Honda Civic, then "brake checked" the officer and "sideswiped" his vehicle, causing a collision.^[13]

The indictment contains 269 separately enumerated overt acts related to the alleged conspiracy. All defendants are presumed innocent.

Claim 4: "No Allegations of Injury to ICE Officers" — Precise, but Incomplete

At the June 16 press conference, U.S. Attorney Rosen declined multiple times to confirm whether any federal officers had been injured. His stated position was that bodily harm "is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious federal crime."^[14] No injury to any federal officer appears anywhere in the 94-page indictment. That is confirmed.

Two separate facts need to be kept distinct here. Assault on a federal officer under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a) does not require injury; it requires a forcible act. The statute carries a maximum sentence of eight years, elevated to twenty if bodily injury results. So assault is charged. The alleged conduct (knocking papers from someone's hand, kicking a government vehicle, sideswiping an officer's car on a highway) is physical contact. Whether any of that constitutes "serious violence" is a judgment the statute leaves to juries and judges, not a factual question the indictment alone can settle.

A claim that the indictment contains "no allegations of injury to specific officers" is accurate. A claim that it contains "no charges of serious violence" misrepresents the indictment's content, since two defendants face felony assault counts. Those two sentences are not the same claim, and the distinction is the one this section turns on.

Claim 5: The Entrapment Allegation

The defense allegation is specific. According to Kevin Riach's court filing, undercover Agent UCA 9833 attended a January 31 Sunrise Movement meeting at the Minneapolis Public Library and offered to "build items" that might assist the groups with "more direct-action protests," while stating that going to jail "did not bother him."^[5][7] Agent UCA 9843 attended meetings from December 2025 onward, including an "Art Club" gathering at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, collecting license plates from the parking lot.

Riach describes this pattern as agents "participating in organizing and directing the groups they were surveilling, at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes." That is his adversarial characterization of documented conduct. It may or may not reflect what a court finds.

What the law requires

Federal entrapment defense requires proving two independent elements: first, government inducement, meaning the government originated the criminal idea and persuaded a defendant to participate; second, the defendant's lack of predisposition to commit that crime absent the inducement.^[15] Courts consistently distinguish agents who provide an opportunity within an ongoing investigation (not entrapment) from agents who actively persuade a reluctant person who would not otherwise have acted (potentially entrapment).

Agent 9833's offer to build items, and the statement about being indifferent to jail, could be characterized as providing an opportunity or as active solicitation. Where it falls on that spectrum requires examining each defendant's prior conduct, statements, and independent actions. That factual record is not fully available from the disclosed DHS reports alone.

Even if Riach's account of every undercover agent interaction is accurate, that does not establish entrapment as a matter of law. A court may find the conduct objectionable and still conclude that specific defendants showed sufficient predisposition. The entrapment defense is rarely successful in federal prosecutions. Entrapment remains a live and plausible legal argument; it is not a resolved factual finding.

DHS vs. FBI: The Lead-Agency Question

The FBI is the primary federal agency responsible for domestic terrorism investigations, operating through roughly 56 Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report confirmed this structure, finding that while HSI agents can lead JTTF investigations where their customs and immigration authorities are directly relevant, domestic terrorism coordination remains FBI-led.^[16]

Operation Puppet Master was led by HSI. The investigation targeted protest movements, union organizing, and community advocacy groups in a major American city. That combination (an HSI-led domestic terrorism investigation into First Amendment-protected activity) sits outside the conventional organizational structure.

Luke William Hunt, an associate professor at the University of Alabama and a former FBI special agent who studies policing, observed in a January 2026 analysis that federal agents during Operation Metro Surge had adopted an investigative posture inconsistent with standard law enforcement principles, prioritizing a "militarized" framework over their traditional investigative functions.^[17] His analysis addressed the broader operational context rather than the HSI-vs.-FBI lead-agency question specifically.

Whether routing this investigation through HSI rather than the FBI was legally significant or simply an administrative choice by the Trump administration is not established by the public record. What is established: HSI led, the FBI typically leads, and the operational circumstances here fall outside HSI's conventional customs-and-trade mandate.

The Better Question

The Guardian's headline frames this as "US government spied on anti-ICE protesters." That framing is accurate but narrows the reader's attention to a single binary: surveillance yes or no. The court filings open three separable questions, each with a different kind of answer.

1. What happened (documented fact): HSI ran undercover operations inside community organizing meetings, infiltrated encrypted communications, and used administrative subpoenas to obtain years of financial records from labor unions, a climate nonprofit, and a racial justice organization, all under a domestic-terrorism-financing designation. Their connection to any criminal conspiracy is what the government is still litigating. This is not in dispute; the DHS records document it.
2. Whether the specific undercover conduct constitutes entrapment (unresolved legal question): No court has ruled. The motion is pending. Even the documented conduct alone does not determine the outcome, because entrapment law requires the predisposition analysis that the released records cannot resolve.
3. Whether this use of government power was appropriate (open policy question): Using domestic-terrorism-financing authority against national labor unions, a climate advocacy group, and a racial justice nonprofit because they overlap with a loosely connected organizing coalition under criminal investigation is a values question about proportionality and the scope of government power. The evidence informs it; it does not resolve it. Reasonable people applying different values to the same facts will reach different conclusions.

Readers who collapse all three into a single "the government did/didn't do something wrong" verdict are being served less information than the record provides. The case is worth following at each layer separately.

What to Watch

• Entrapment motions: Riach and other defense counsel have signaled plans to file motions to dismiss based on government misconduct and entrapment. Those motions will force the court to assess the undercover conduct against the legal standard, providing the first formal judicial evaluation of whether what the DHS records show crosses any line.
• § 1509 challenge: Whether the customs summons statute authorizes financial surveillance of advocacy nonprofits and labor unions will likely be contested directly. Congressional interest in the § 1509 question has been episodic (Wyden's 2022 inquiry produced no legislation); the current deployment may revive that scrutiny depending on the midterm composition of oversight committees.
• Good and Pretti investigations: State and federal investigations into the two January killings are proceeding on a separate track. Federal investigators began sharing evidence including body camera footage and Good's vehicle with Minnesota state authorities in July 2026. Whether state prosecutors file charges against the federal agents who killed Good and Pretti would substantially shift the political and legal context surrounding this entire case.
• DAMN trial: The defendants face trial in federal court. The government has described terabytes of Signal chat content as central to its evidence. The trial will test both the conspiracy theory and the underlying surveillance record in an adversarial proceeding, with public findings on the record.