Fifteen alleged members of two Minneapolis antifa networks face federal felony charges for a coordinated campaign to obstruct ICE and DHS officers through blockades, surveillance, and violence.
They ran a Signal group called "Whipple Watch." Members photographed license plates, logged vehicle movements, and shared real-time intelligence on federal agents entering and leaving the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. When that wasn't enough, some of them threw blocks of ice at government vehicles and set up physical blockades around the building. On Monday, a federal grand jury said that was a crime.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen and HSI Special Agent in Charge Michael McCarthy announced June 16 that 15 members and associates of two Minneapolis-based antifa networks, Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN), which prosecutors say was formerly called Twin Cities Direct Action, and its affiliate the Black Cat Workers Collective, have been indicted on an eight-count federal indictment. Twelve were arrested in early-morning raids by Homeland Security Investigations. One was already in custody on separate charges. Two remain at large.
The charges are serious: conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer under 18 U.S.C. § 372, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property. All 15 defendants face the conspiracy count. A selection face the more serious individual charges on top of it.
The 15 defendants named in the indictment are Isaac Auman Sant, Emmett James Doyle, Cameron Kennedy, Callum Robinet, Erik Davis, Brian Stillwell Apland, Kyle Wagner, Hannah Margaret Van De Water Davis, Treasure Cay Thoreson, Nathan Junho Kim, Alec Stewart, Douglas Misterek, Dustin Scott Beisell, William Morgan, and Natasha Rakotz.
The alleged conspiracy took shape in the weeks after the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge in December 2025, a sweeping ICE-led enforcement initiative in the Twin Cities. Prosecutors say DAMN activated its rapid-response infrastructure almost immediately. The "Whipple Watch" Signal chat became the operational nerve center: members surveilled the federal building, photographed agents, and coordinated street-level interference.
Two blockades, on January 23 and again on March 1, physically obstructed the Whipple building's entrances in attempts to halt ICE operations. The Black Cat Workers Collective, which describes itself in its own materials as committed to "militant class struggle, community self-defense, and revolution," is named as an antifa affinity group that coordinated with DAMN through this period.
What the indictment describes is not spontaneous protest. It is a cell-structured organization with defined roles, operational security protocols, and an explicit goal of using force or the threat of it to stop federal law enforcement from doing its job. That distinction matters legally and politically. Throwing ice at a federal vehicle is not protected speech. Stalking agents to their cars is not a First Amendment issue. Rosen's office is prosecuting it as the conspiracy it allegedly was.
The enforcement gap the Biden years left behind
The comparison to the Biden era is not incidental. For four years, federal prosecutors in jurisdictions across the country largely declined to charge antifa-affiliated activists with federal conspiracy offenses even when the conduct was coordinated and violent. Minneapolis was among the cities where that hands-off posture was most visible. Operation Metro Surge itself would have been unthinkable under the previous administration's DOJ, which resisted large-scale immigration enforcement in sanctuary-leaning metro areas.
The Trump Justice Department has moved in the opposite direction with consistency. It prosecuted rioters from the Portland courthouse sieges, it pursued federal charges against anti-ICE organizers in other cities, and now it is bringing an eight-count indictment against a Minnesota antifa network that apparently believed the old rules still applied. They do not.
The indictment also signals something about resources and methodology. HSI ran the investigation, not just local law enforcement. The use of a federal grand jury, the breadth of charges, and the simultaneous early-morning arrests of 12 people indicate a sustained, coordinated federal investigation, not a reactive response to a single incident.
Critics of the prosecution, predictably, are already framing this as political targeting of protesters. Newsweek quoted attorneys who questioned whether the conduct crossed the legal threshold for federal felonies. That argument will get its day in court. What is in the indictment, though, is not a description of people holding signs outside a federal building. It is a description of surveillance operations, vehicle attacks, and organized blockades designed to physically prevent immigration officers from carrying out lawful duties.
The two defendants still at large are presumably the next development to watch. Beyond that, this case moves to the district court in Minnesota, where the eight-count indictment will be tested against evidence the government says it has gathered through months of investigation. If the Signal chats are as damning as prosecutors suggest, the cell-based coordination DAMN allegedly ran may prove to be its undoing.
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