In commitment to its mission to get justice and liberty off the streets, the Justice Department on Tuesday
charged 15 individuals in Minnesota for conspiracy and assault against ICE’s evil crusades in Operation Metro Surge, one of the administration’s
varying immigration crackdowns on Democrat-led cities last year—and one that ultimately led to the deaths of
Renee Nicole Good and
Alex Pretti. In their 94-page indictment, federal prosecutors sought to link the 15 defendants to “antifa”—an unorganized group of single actors combating far-right extremism—and seemed, for all of it, to
have little to no standing for declaring such affiliations. Great!
“What we’re seeing is this attempt, from this national security memorandum last September, is to try to break off and isolate groups of people by labeling them domestic terrorists, by labeling them antifa, and trying to allow federal government to target and repress certain groups of people based on these allegations,” Bruce Nestor, an immigration lawyer who’s also representing one of the defendants,
told DemocracyNow in an interview. “Conspiracy is a prosecutor’s tool that allows them to try to hold everybody in a group accountable for what they claim a certain individual may have done.”
The charges were announced this week by the state’s top federal prosecutor, Daniel Rosen, who held an accompanying news briefing to call the charges a “broad federal effort to address organized lawless behavior.” “You watch how this case plays out, you watch how the evidence plays out.”
Watching so far, however, has not yielded much. To establish how incapable the 15 are of “nonviolent, peaceful protests,” Rosen cited during the press conference a Facebook post from one of the defendants, who reportedly wrote: “We need to become ungovernable.” As Rosen asked crowds afterwards, “What’s wrong with being ungovernable?”
Along with conspiracy and assault, the DOJ
says it’s also invoking charges of interstate stalking, threats, and destruction of government property, asserting also that Direct Action Minnesota—of which the 15 are involved—“advocates, promotes, and utilizes militant tactics and violence.” Hmm.
It’s worth noting here that while 15 have been charged for links to an organization that seems to be a one-stop boogeyman for whatever MAGA
deems political violence, there have been zero charges yet regarding the fatal shootings of Good or Pretti—nor any federal cooperation with state officials in investigating their deaths. But like I say… the DOJ’s working hard to get justice off the streets.
