MINNEAPOLIS — Kevin Dwire, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Minnesota, told participants in a well-attended Militant Labor Forum here Aug. 22 that working people and the unions need to speak out in protest against recent revelations of a far-reaching government spy operation, investigation and indictments.
The headline in the Aug. 13 Minnesota Star Tribune read, “Federal agents surveilled Minnesota unions in hunt for Antifa conspiracy case.” It detailed how Department of Homeland Security agents had targeted unions and other participants in protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s so-called Metro Surge raids, arrests and deportations of immigrants.
This assault on the constitutional right to free speech and association must be answered and fought, Dwire said. He pointed to the fact the government is carrying out a similar spy and slander operation against those who protest against the U.S. rulers’ stepped-up economic and political war against Cuba. Fox News reports federal agents are considering charging defenders of Cuban sovereignty with violating the notorious Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Among the unions targeted by the federal spy operation — code-named Operation Puppet Master — are the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, and local chapters of the Communications Workers of America, Service Employees International Union and others.
The SWP calls on unionists and defenders of political rights to join together to speak out against this attack, regardless of their political views on other questions.
The unions here had played a key role in mobilizing thousands in well-marshaled street actions that helped wind down the ICE raids and arrests.
Undercover government agents had posed as activists, spied on and recorded meetings at the United Labor Centre building in Minneapolis, in Loring Park, at the Augsburg Park Library and in a number of churches, the Minnesota Reformer reported.
Agents collected the license plate numbers of attendees at a meeting of anti-ICE protesters at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville, later pulling up their names. The agents then compiled a growing dossier, including attendees’ names, photos, addresses, vehicle registrations and job information on their families.
Kevin Riach, lead defense attorney for one of the 15 indicted, told the media about government documents he has reviewed. They show that an undercover agent attended a meeting of the environmental group Sunrise Movement and learned it focused on “peaceful” protests. So he offered his construction skills to build items for use in more “direct action” protests.
The Department of Justice produced a 94-page indictment claiming that 15 anti-ICE protesters and some Minnesota unions and other organizations were part of an antifa conspiracy to finance domestic terrorism.
As part of its grand jury presentation, the Justice Department displayed a diagram arguing that major labor unions were connected to the “the Conspiracy” at the core of the case.
Stepped-up attacks on area unions
Homeland Security is now demanding financial records from the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Minnesota Association of Professional Employees and the SEIU. “The Minnesota AFL-CIO and several of our affiliated unions are being targeted simply because our state’s Labor Movement stood in solidarity with our immigrant union members and neighbors,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham told the press.
The 15 opponents of the government’s assault on immigrants here who have been indicted are charged with federal crimes, including conspiracy to impede a federal officer, multiple counts of interstate stalking, interstate threats, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, assault on a federal officer, destruction of government property and committing acts of violence against ICE personnel. They are fighting the charges.
“The Department of Justice is attempting to criminalize people’s civic engagement and silence those who spoke out during Operation Metro Surge. Activists, constitutional observers and union members are being targeted through federal indictments,” the Minnesota Nurses Association Board of Directors said in a statement June 17, the day after the indictments were issued.
Kia Lor, a Hmong immigrant from Laos who runs a tea and herb stand in the Hmong Village complex in St. Paul, joined Dwire on the platform. Her son, 48-year-old Xue, has a computer repair shop next to her herb stand. He was arrested by ICE last December and is still being held in an ICE detention center in southern Minnesota. He is threatened with deportation to Laos, a country he left as an infant.
Lor explained that after the Vietnam War, she and other Hmong women, whose fathers and husbands had fought alongside U.S. forces, fled retaliation from Pathet Lao soldiers. She swam across the Mekong River at age 14 with baby Xue on her back, ending up in a Thai refugee camp. Then she was able to relocate to Minnesota in the 1980s and gain refugee status.
Lor is one of a number of small vendors in the community who, like many in the area, have had their livelihoods upended by the ICE operation.
“The U.S. rulers’ campaign against immigrant workers takes place amid today’s deepening world economic crises and the intensifying competition between imperialist and other capitalist powers it breeds,” Dwire said. “It pushes them to drive down the wages and working conditions of toilers here, to pit native-born and immigrant workers against each other, seeking to create a pariah layer of superexploited workers. The mass actions against Operation Metro Surge helped unify workers, setting an important example.”
Dwire said his campaign calls for a union-led fight to win amnesty for all immigrants in the U.S. to help unite the working class. And he pledged his campaign would help expose and fight against the government’s attacks on constitutional freedoms workers need.
A $225 collection was taken to help with legal expenses of Xue Lor.