Federal prosecutors indicted 15 anti-ICE activists in Minnesota on felony conspiracy charges on Tuesday, and the case tied to antifa moved quickly to the St. Paul federal courthouse the same day. The defendants were accused of monitoring and at times impeding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers.
Natasha Rakotz, one of the Minneapolis 15 and a caretaker, told reporters after her arraignment, “The only thing I did was care about this, my community and my neighbors.” Her charge sits beside a narrower factual record in the indictment, which also cited discussion of ICE activities on Signal and an article on a pro-anarchist website.
St. Paul federal courthouse
As many as 200 Minnesotans gathered outside the arraignment and chanted, “Free them all!” Rev. Jen Crow went to the courthouse after learning Tuesday that the 15 activists had been indicted. Crow told a reporter by phone on Wednesday, “When you see the federal government turning on its own people, the thing is we have to act anyway and just trust in the purpose and trust in what we’re doing and our care for each other, and just really lean into that.”
U.S. Marshals used chemical irritants against protesters outside the courthouse on Tuesday. Videos showed other protesters hit with pepper spray, with one violently thrown to the ground. Pilar Pedraza of KSTP-TV said witnesses told her protesters were holding the doors open so chants could be heard inside the building before people in gas masks came out and started spraying a chemical irritant.
Direct Action Minnesota
The indictment tied the defendants to Direct Action Minnesota, also called DAMN, and described acts that fit a protest record more than a conventional sabotage case: Signal chats about ICE activity, plus publication on a pro-anarchist website. That mix leaves the central legal theory in view. Prosecutors have charged conspiracy, but the publicly described conduct includes both monitoring and speech-like acts.
Crow’s response also reflects the longer arc behind Tuesday’s events. Five-plus months earlier, masked federal immigration agents had descended on Minneapolis, and during that period she was arrested at an airport sit-in, organized a vigil after the murder of Alex Pretti, and held trainings at her church for volunteer observers. The indictments now turn that network of observers into a federal case.
Rakotz’s arraignment remark and the courthouse protest point to the next practical issue for the Minneapolis 15: whether prosecutors can connect the monitoring, the Signal discussions, and the published article to felony conspiracy in a way that survives scrutiny. The record now public shows the charge, the protest response, and the force used outside the courthouse; it does not yet show the government’s full proof chain.
