This story originally appeared in Workday Magazine on Aug. 21, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
On Tuesday morning, a coalition of leaders and members from labor, community, and faith organizations in Minnesota denounced Operation Puppet Master, an alleged campaign by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to spy on Minnesotans during Operation Metro Surge earlier this year. In a press conference held outside of Target’s headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, the coalition urged Minnesotans to continue standing in solidarity with one another, and demanded companies headquartered in the state sign the business for democracy pledge.
The call comes after theNew York Times published a report on August 13 about the campaign by DHS. Details were made public in a motion for discovery filed by Kevin Riach, an attorney for healthcare worker Isaac Sant. According to the motion, federal 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. The agents gathered information about Minnesotans from law enforcement databases and internet searches, and created dossiers that are apparently now available agency-wide.”
The documents describe surveillance and infiltration of union and community meetings during and before Operation Metro Surge. Eighteen organizations, including labor unions, were listed in a chart connecting them to Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN), a group of individuals who resisted what coalition members call a “terror campaign” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Operation Metro Surge. Sant is one of 15 individuals who were indicted and charged by the federal government for conspiracy in what organizers have called an act of political repression and retaliation. More than half of the 15 are rank-and-file union members, and now the federal government is claiming labor organizations to be part of the alleged conspiracy. The motion continues: “With no evidence, the government alleged to the grand jury that this conspiracy in this case extends far beyond the defendants to include the AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Monarca, Veterans for Peace, and the Grease Pit bicycle repair shop, among others.”
In addition to the AFL-CIO, Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE) Local 59, and Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), SEIU Local 26 is also named by DHS along with the Workers Solidarity Circle and Black Cat Workers Collective. The motion also states that Homeland Security Investigations subpoenaed financial records for several labor unions, including SEIU locals in Minnesota and the Communication Workers of America (CWA).
Alec Stewart is a MAPE union member and one of the Minnesota 15. “The revelation of Operation Puppet Master exposes that while the government was targeting immigrant communities, tearing families apart, abducting children and murdering folks in the street, they were also attempting to disrupt and dismantle one of the facets of Minnesota that makes us so unique, and that is our strong and unified labor movement,” he said at the press conference.
Treasure Thoreson is a teacher, executive board member at MFE Local 59, and one of the Minnesota 15. Thoreson spoke at the press conference about the food drives, fundraisers, grocery deliveries, and support that educators gave to their community all while continuing to show up to schools to educate students. “The government feels so threatened by our ability to come together and use our protected First Amendment rights, our legal rights as unionists that they feel they must surveil and disrupt. However, that to me is a signal that what we are doing is effective, impactful, and powerful,” she said. According to Thoreson, a GoFundMe that she donated to was flagged by DHS as evidence that she is part of a conspiracy.
Gabriel Van de Water is a community organizer and artist who is one of the Minnesota 15. Van de Water referred to a report by Human Rights Watch detailing the human rights abuses that happened under Operation Metro Surge. “Human Rights Watch referred to the occupation as a manufactured crisis. This administration has chosen to follow up that crisis with a manufactured conspiracy,” said Van de Water. “The Minnesota 15 case and others like it must be understood as an attempt to criminalize dissent, to make an example out of some of us so that all of us hesitate to exercise our rights to protect one another. We will not allow this to happen.”
Kieran Knutson is president of CWA Local 7250, which was also named in the document. “We are more determined than ever to stand up to our repressive government. We are more determined than ever to stand in solidarity with working class people,” he said. “The Minnesota 15 are some of the finest people I know. These are our people, we have their backs. We know that this prosecution against them is a bogus attack on the entire movement.”
Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, the executive director of Unidos MN, a grassroots social justice organization, spoke about the surveillance and infiltration enacted by the federal government on community members and noted the silence of corporations like Target. “They sat in our libraries, in training rooms, and wrote down what we thought about the Constitution. They took down license plates outside a church in Roseville, and built files of the families inside, their addresses, children, and where they work. Federal agents walked into a Target store in Richfield and detained two citizens who were at work,” said Gonzalez Avalos. “To this day, Target has said nothing about it. We came here today because that silence still has answers available.”
Target has been the center of national boycott campaigns for rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments, and now this Minnesota coalition is demanding that the corporation meet with coalition members before early voting begins on September 15. Best Buy, 3M, and Cargill were also named by the coalition as corporations that are being urged to sign the pledge.
There is also a labor-endorsed call to boycott Target during the back-to-school season. President of MFE Local 59 Marcia Howard highlighted this call by the American Federation of Teachers that was supported by the national AFL-CIO, which passed a resolution supporting the boycott at its constitutional convention held in Minneapolis in June.
“Educators spend eight billion dollars on back to school supplies,” said Howard. “Between AFT calling for a boycott and AFL-CIO extending that boycott, the only thing that this corporation needs to do is make good. Make good for Alex Pretti, for Renee Good. For all of us who have been in the streets, for our students, for each other.”
Target made $5.1 billion in profits in 2025, and its chair and former CEO Brian Cornell pulled in over $21 million.
Minnesota AFL-CIO president Bernie Burnham speaks in front of Target’s headquarters in downtown Minneapolis. The AFL-CIO was one of the organizations listed by DHS. Photo by Amie Stager.
Bernie Burnham, the president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, which represents 1000 local unions and hundreds of thousands of workers in the state, said at the press conference that “attacks on labor are not new. Those with power always push back when they face the kind of solidarity we saw in Minnesota last winter.” Burnham continued, “Instead of holding federal agents accountable for shooting and killing Renee Good and our [American Federation of Government Employees] union brother Alex Pretti, or addressing the dangerous and deadly conditions within immigration and detention facilities, the Trump administration continues to weaponize our federal government to intimidate our unions, our communities, and anyone who peacefully opposes their radically authoritarian agenda.”
Coalition members say they remain unintimidated. “Countless Minnesotans rose to the occasion and stood strong in the face of what the Trump administration tried to do to our communities and the whole nation owes those Minnesotans a debt of gratitude,” said Phillip Cryan, the executive vice president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa. “We keep us safe. If they come after any of us, 15 of us, or 1500 of us, the hundreds of thousands of us who did what we needed to do this winter to protect our communities, will be there to support them.”
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