Federal prosecutors on Tuesday indicted 15 Minnesota activists on felony conspiracy charges, escalating a case that accuses the group of monitoring and at times impeding ICE and Border Patrol officers. The defendants, known as the Minneapolis 15, were set for arraignment in St. Paul as supporters gathered outside the courthouse.
The charges reached the street fast. As many as 200 Minnesotans chanted “Free them all!” outside the St. Paul federal courthouse, and U.S. Marshals used chemical irritants against some protesters. Videos showed people hit with pepper spray and one protester thrown violently to the ground, a sharp edge to a day that began with a federal indictment and ended in a confrontation over how far the government can go when it says it is protecting its agents.
Jen Crow said she came to the courthouse after learning of the indictments because she felt she had to protest. She said that when she sees “the federal government turning on its own people,” the response has to be to act anyway, trust the purpose, and lean into care for one another. “To let the fear wash through, but not get stuck in it,” she said later by phone on Wednesday.
That argument runs straight into the prosecutors’ case. Supporters are treating the indictments as punishment for dissent, but the felony conspiracy charges center on allegations that the activists did more than show up and speak out. Federal prosecutors say the Minneapolis 15 monitored law enforcement and, at times, impeded ICE and Border Patrol officers. One of the defendants, Natasha Rakotz, was accused by prosecutors of sideswiping an immigration agent’s vehicle, though the filing available here does not spell out the evidence behind that allegation or when it happened.
Rakotz rejected the portrayal of her conduct after her arraignment. “The only thing I did was care about this, my community and my neighbors,” she said. Pilar Pedraza also said witnesses told her protesters held doors open so chants could be heard inside the building before people inside the courthouse put on gas masks. The scene suggested a widening split between a movement trying to project solidarity and a government responding as if it faced interference with federal operations.
The case is tied to Direct Action Minnesota, or DAMN, and it arrives after five-plus months in which masked federal immigration agents descended on Minneapolis. In that stretch, Crow was arrested at an airport sit-in, helped organize a vigil after the murder of Alex Pretti, and held trainings at her church for volunteer observers. Officials say the campaign has come at a high cost, with more than 4,000 immigrant arrests and two citizens gunned down in the street.
What comes next is the court process itself, and the prosecution has not yet laid out a public roadmap beyond the indictment. For now, the most important unanswered question is not whether the protests will continue — they clearly will — but what specific evidence federal prosecutors say turns surveillance, chanting and street-level resistance into a felony conspiracy.
