A crucial component of the Trump administration’s war on immigrants is targeting nonimmigrants who stand up for their neighbors. Federal immigration agents shot dead Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January as they were doing just that.  And last week, the Department of Justice indicted 15 Minnesotans involved in resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement during this winter’s awful Operation Metro Surge.

We’re still learning about the details of the individuals named in these arrests and the charges against them. They’re members of a group called Direct Action Minnesota, and the government’s indictment says they’re being charged with “conspiring to impede or injure federal officers.”

Many of us in Minneapolis are hopeful that the charges will ultimately be dropped, that is, that this eventually ends the way the “Broadview Six” case ended.

At least one of the 15 is a member of the local educators union. Educators in Minneapolis were among those most affected by Metro Surge, as students who were immigrants or children of immigrants sometimes watched their parents be abducted by ICE, or had to hide in their homes from immigration agents. Educators sometimes taught online to reduce students’ and parents’ vulnerability to ICE enforcement.

Many of us in Minneapolis are hopeful that the charges will ultimately be dropped; that is, that this eventually ends the way the “Broadview Six” case ended. Charges were dropped against a group of six protesters and observers who were arrested outside the ICE processing center in suburban Chicago in late May because of “significant errors” in the grand jury process.

But as publicist Lisa Braun Dubbels wrote after the Minnesota indictments were announced last week, “A charge does its work the instant it is announced. It affixes a name and a face to a crime in the minds of millions, most of whom will never learn how the case ended.”

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The federal government has consistently lied about its interactions with people in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge; therefore, what the government says cannot be trusted. Kristi Noem, then-head of the Department of Homeland Security, immediately made unverified claims about Good and Pretti when they were killed, accusing them of domestic terrorism. In both incidents, the government said immigration agents had killed people acting aggressively toward them, contrary to video evidence.

On June 8, the Justice Department dropped charges against a St. Paul man ICE agents shot at in December. The government had alleged that the man rammed agents with his car, but the Minnesota Reformer reports that “agents’ stories contained contradictions.”

In February, the government dropped charges against two men it accused of assaulting immigration agents, one of whom agents shot. An agent had claimed he was attacked with a snow shovel and broom, but The New York Times reported in April that video from the scene of the shooting “contradicts the agent’s claim that three assailants had beaten him with a shovel and broom for roughly 3 minutes before he opened fire. Instead, the confrontation depicted in the video lasts about 12 seconds and shows two men struggling with the agent. It shows no sustained attack with a shovel.”

As the government raids “antifa groups” in Minneapolis with the SAME charges levied against myself and the rest of the Broadview Six, we need to be asking how they got this indictment.And as charges (hopefully) get dropped, we must remember the process is the punishment.

— Kat Abughazaleh (@katmabu.bsky.social) 2026-06-16T16:06:11.283Z

President Donald Trump has weaponized the legal system to demonize not only people of color, but also people of every color who resist his brutal agenda. And the resistance was particularly profound here in the Twin Cities.

Indeed, the world responded so positively to our resistance because our movement was rooted in compassion, joy, love and inclusivity. In contrast to masked agents pushing and shoving children at a Minneapolis high school, South Minneapolis residents joined singing resistance groups. Parents and grandparents organized as observers at school bus stops and daycare centers. Christian, Jewish and Muslim clerics prayed together in the streets, while Somalis who have made Minnesota home handed out free sambusas at events memorializing Good and Pretti.

Brass Solidarity, a community band founded after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, blasted out tunes on icy streets, while senior citizens were among those who bundled up to carry signs during a mass strike and protest march on one of the coldest days of the year.

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The Trump administration quickly recognized Minneapolis residents as a threat to their immigration narrative, and in the earliest days of the resistance, neighborhood organizers warned that online groups were being infiltrated and surveilled.

The federal government says some among the indicted 15 called for violence against ICE in online resistance groups, though notably, one of the people the government says was pressing for more confrontational tactics allegedly complained about “a ton of pushback from libs”; that is, he was reportedly frustrated by the unwillingness of the vast majority of the people in the movement to abandon nonviolent methods.

Whatever their rhetoric, none of those arrested appears to have committed actual violence against ICE. One woman, Natasha Rakotz, 45, is accused of tracking the license plate numbers of ICE agents and sharing them with others in a Signal chat. The government says that in May, Rakotz “side-swiped” an agent’s car and caused a collision.

I can’t just sit there and not do anything, but I definitely would never do anything illegal.”

NATASHA RAKOTZ

“I think all of this is absolutely ridiculous. I am not a violent person,” Rakotz, an in-home health aide, said outside the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in St. Paul on Wednesday. “I’ve never been violent. I’ve never had trouble with the law. The only thing I did was care about my community, and my neighbors … I can’t just sit there and not do anything, but I definitely would never do anything illegal.”

I hope people outside the Twin Cities look beyond the headlines and find out more about these 15 people, my neighbors. I hope people remember that while 15 have been charged, many thousands more of us stood together in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors. Millions more people across America are doing the same thing, not out of a desire for violence or chaos, but truly out of love.

They can’t arrest us all.