REVENGE; Trump’s Vendettas Increase Against ICE Protesters
On January 7, Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother and writer, was shot and killed by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after she was trying to drive away from an anti-ICE demonstration in Minneapolis.
Three weeks later, on January 24, 2026, ICE agents mortally wounded Alex Pretti, 37, a protester who was filming ICE activity on his cell phone.
Four days after Pretti’s death, the government began an investigation not to find those who killed Good and Pretti but to arrest those who allegedly planned the mass demonstrations against the government’s attack on undocumented immigrants.
Since the start of trump’s second term, at least 10 people have been killed in immigration operations, and dozens more have died in immigration detention. The government, however, has decided not to investigate the incidents but rather to turn the might of the Justice Department on those who have demonstrated against trump’s demonic immigration policies.
Most recently, the trump vendetta has focused on the protests in Minnesota; a leader in the fight against neo-Nazis and white supremacists; and the state of Colorado.
Trump’s latest effort was to arrest Heidi Beirech, a leading expert on far-right extremism. Not coincidentally, the charges came on the anniversary of the 2017 violent protest in Charlottesville, Va. by a group that included neo-Nazis, white supremacists, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, Klansmen, and far-right militias. The demonstration led to arrests and the death of one counter protester as trump refused to condemn the far right but said that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
The ongoing persecutions are reminiscent of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the government’s illegal campaign to arrest and silence critics during the time of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. COINTELPRO involved a series of covert projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political parties and organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive.
The campaign to discredit and dehumanize the administration’s foes are reflected in the Hitleresque ravings of trump’s top advisor Stephen Miller, who is the architect of the government’s cruel program to deport millions of Americans with brown skins. Miller explained the administration’s complete disdain and disgust for anyone on the left in remarks made at the February 23, 2017, CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference).
“The leftist is fundamentally motivated by envy, by hatred, by jealousy. The leftist looks at what is beautiful and what is good and what is natural and is filled with envy and hatred. The leftist looks at a perfect family with a perfect life and a perfect job and perfect kids that goes to church every Sunday and is filled with a feeling of inadequacy and jealousy, and they covet,” Miller said. “And they turn those emotions ultimately into a desire to subjugate, to oppress, and to inflict pain and suffering. It’s not a coincidence that when you look at these violent antifa demonstrations and you see any photograph of those who were assembled — to be blunt, not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They’re all deformed in some way — in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism. . . . Every one of them, through the course of their life and their decisions, has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways, to the point in which their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred.”
Much more succinct and much less deranged were the reactions from the lawyer for Isaac Sant, one of those charged in a federal indictment of those involved in the Minnesota protests.
“These wild conspiracy allegations are born from the fantasies of political retribution that animate the Trump Administration,” the lawyer said in a court submission.
Trump, Miller and other senior administration officials have castigated the political opposition as “deformed,” “scarred,” and “filled with ugliness.” The lodestone of trump’s revenge war are outlined in policies that encourage political prosecutions, National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (“NSPM-7”). The memorandum, issued in September 2025 by trump, directs the Justice Department to prosecute ICE protesters and other opponents of the administration.
The trump administration has targeted dozens of political opponents. Just a few included California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsome, for criticizing trump; Reid Hoffman, president of American Future Republic, for funding E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits against trump; Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz for criticizing the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota; Democratic members of congress, including Rep. Maggie Goodlander, N.H., Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, Pa., Rep. Chris Deluzio, Pa., Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Mich. and Sen. Mark Kelly, Ariz.
Beirech Busted
Last week, the justice department charged Beirech with financial crimes as part of the government’s ongoing case against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The SPLC is a non-profit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Ala., the organization is known for its court battles against white supremacist groups, for its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting anti-bias education. The SPLC was founded in 1971 by Morris Dees, Joseph J. Levin Jr., and Julian Bond.
The SPLC has drawn particular ire from conservatives and from trump’s justice department for its annual “Hate Map,” which lists various hate groups, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and the Proud Boys, both which have gained trump’s support.
The SPLC listed Turning Point because Kirk had “warned his hundreds of thousands of listeners” they were being replaced by foreigners. Kirk was referring to the debunked, far right “great replacement theory” that claims that elites are intentionally replacing whites with non-whites through immigration.
Conservatives say the inclusion of Turning Point and other groups that espouse restrictionist immigration policies unfairly aligned them with neo nazis and other white supremacists.
After Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, the FBI announced it was cutting ties with the SPLC. FBI Director Kash Patel accused the organization of having become a “partisan smear machine” whose work “has been used to defame mainstream Americans.”
The Proud Boys is a far-right, neo-fascist militant organization that promotes political violence and supports trump. Its leaders were convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by thousands of trump supporters. Many were later pardoned by trump.
In April, the justice department charged the SPLC in connection with an undercover informant program that the organization previously operated to infiltrate various hate groups.
The government said the civil rights organization committed financial crimes by laundering money set up in bank accounts in the names of fictitious companies to funnel payments to informants inside the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, and other extremist organizations.
Historically, the SPLC and other organizations have commonly used paid informants to infiltrate far right groups and to share information with law enforcement. The government says the SPLC deceived donors into thinking they were combatting extremism, when they were actually supporting it. The organization has strongly denied the accusation and says the charges are politically motivated.
At the time of the SPLC indictment, then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has since been confirmed as Attorney General, said the SPLC “is manufacturing racism to justify its existence. Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.”
Patel said the SPLC “lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups — even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes.”
Beirich, who tracked hate groups and founded the Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The indictment alleges that Beirich, 59, was in a romantic relationship with one of the informants and that $140,000 of donor money was entered into a joint bank account they had.
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Beirich is the chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and is often sought out as an expert on far-right groups. She submitted testimony to the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol about the extremism of the Proud Boys.
The Global Project Against Hate & Extremism has published various reports that have undoubtedly offended trump, including “Project 2025 and the Unraveling of America.” Project 2025, created by the far right Heritage Foundation, is considered a blueprint for the trump administration. Others focused on “Christian nationalism and authoritarianism;” “Trump’s Red Scare;” “Trump is Trying His Election Denial Playbook Again — Don’t Believe Him;” and ““Voter Fears Grow as Trump Continues to Lie About Election Integrity.”
Beirich is an expert on the American and European far right, including white supremacist, anti-immigrant, antigovernment, and other extremist movements. In 2020, Beirich co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) to monitor and counter increasingly transnational hate movements, particularly in areas of the world where capacity is limited to combat far-right movements that threaten human rights and democracy.
Beirich earned a Ph.D. in political science from Purdue University, specializing in European fascism and far-right movements. She holds M.A. degrees in political science and economics. Before co-founding GPAHE, Beirich led the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Protesters Targeted
At the same time the Justice Department was building a conspiracy case against Minnesota protesters in an operation named “Operation Metro Surge,” it was vacating and dismissing the last remaining convictions linked with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by trump supporters.
Four days after Pretti’s murder, Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of the Immigration Customs Enforcement Bureau (ICE), officially opened its mass spying campaign, which it called “Operation Puppet Master.”
The operation involved undercover agents posing as protesters who surveilled community meetings at churches, parks, libraries, schools and union halls.
On June 17, a federal grand jury indicted 15 people on charges they conspired to obstruct ICE operations in the Minneapolis area. The indictment charges the defendants with being part of a conspiracy to impede federal officers, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.
Prosecutors allege the defendants were members of Twin Cities Direct Action (TCDA), which later renamed itself Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN). The indictment describes the group as “dedicated and committed to direct action against federal law and immigration enforcement.”
The government claims that protesters used blockades, vehicle surveillance, shields, and physical confrontations to interfere with federal agents. At least one protester was charged with stalking after he followed ICE agents in his car. Another knocked the notes out an agent’s hands and then kicked and dented an ICE vehicle. He was charged with assault on a federal officer and destruction of government property.
In contrast with such alleged illegal activity, masked ICE agents smashed in auto windows, used flash grenades and tear gas to deter demonstrators, killed two protesters and injured many more, doxxed demonstrators to be publicized through the attorney general’s office and otherwise terrorized and intimidated protesters.
The government claims that since November 28, 2026, “violent opportunists (VOs) have exploited the protests as cover to attempt breaches of federal properties and have perpetrated multiple assaults against federal officers tasked with protecting these facilities.”
Kevin Riach, a lawyer for one of those charged, said in a court paper that protsters were excercising their constitutional rights.
“These agents surreptitiously recorded dozens of conversations with ordinary people who were simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest ICE’s lawless rampage in our state,” Riach wrote.
Agents collected information about Minnesotans from law enforcement databases and internet searches and created dossiers while secretly obtaining financial records for several national labor unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Communications Workers of America, and social justice non-profits including the Sunrise Movement, an environmental advocacy non-profit; and Voices for Racial Justice, a racial justice organizing group that has trained more than 400 activists since it was formed in 1993.
Other groups monitored included the AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees; Monarca, a coalition that has trained more than 50,000 neighborhood observers; Veterans for Peace; and the activist, Grease Pit bicycle repair shop, among others.
Riach wrote that in one instance, agents went to an anti-ICE meeting at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville and copied license plate information of protesters and activists. Agents used the information to obtain the names of the attendees, searched social media for pictures of the individuals, and compiled an “intel workup” that included names, photos, addresses, personal information including family and employment information and vehicle registration information, for each meeting attendee.
“None of these individuals did anything other than engage in protected First Amendment speech in a church meeting room,” the lawyer wrote.
In another example, on January 19, 2026, an undercover agent attended a protest planning meeting at the La Dona Cerveceria restaurant in North Minneapolis. The protest and general strike drew tens of thousands of protesters to Minneapolis on Jan. 23, 2026.
Colorado Extortion Plan
Trump’s rage about his loss in the 2021 presidential election led to the cancelation of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants earmarked for Colorado infrastructure and energy projects.
According to recently published reports, earlier this year, trump threatened “harsh measures” if the state of Colorado did not release Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, from prison or lose the federal funds.
Trump used Peters’ case to further promote his own unproven claims about election fraud, which he claims cost him the 2021 election.
Peters worked as an elections clerk in Mesa County, Colo., during the 2020 election, where the results she certified were found to heavily favor trump. President Biden won Colorado by more than 13 points in 2020, which led trump to accuse Democrats of having “stolen” his victory.
Prosecutors in the Peters case said she brought in a person to make a copy of the county’s voter systems, with the aim of exposing alleged fraud. Peters later claimed that she was trying to preserve election records in case trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud was proven valid.
The former clerk was found guilty on seven counts, including four felony counts for election interference, and was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
She was released in June after less than a quarter of her sentence. Trump gave her a symbolic pardon in 2025 but could not win her release from prison because she was convicted on Colorado state charges.
After receiving pressure from trump over crucial funding, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) commuted Peters’ sentence in May.
