Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional spying operation carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond. The high-profile Minnesota 15 prosecution makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), flush with federal funds and newly hired personnel, is now President Donald Trump’s primary tool against dissent, with a powerful array of post-9/11 investigative authorities brought to bear against everyday Americans organizing their communities. Nothing of this scale has been seen in the United States, experts say, since the federal government’s counterinsurgency against the New Left and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

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