Harv's Corner 02/23/2026

Harv's Corner

Have I mentioned Hitler's SS Squads?

Agents menaced observers at their homes, filings say
By JONAH E. BROMWICH The New York Times

On a subzero Tuesday last month, Daniel Woo, a 29-yearold sound designer incensed by the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, drove to a St. Paul supermarket parking lot to monitor federal agents gathered there.

A gray SUV turned out of the lot. Woo checked in with his fellow monitors, a network of civilians tracking agents' movements and alerting potential targets. The group confirmed the vehicle had been associated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Woo followed it . The SUV reached a freeway and headed west, and Woo became suspicious.  And sure enough, the SUV soon reached his neighborhood in Plymouth, about 40 minutes from where it had started, and pulled up in front of his house.

"They just came over to intimidate me," Woo said in an interview last week. "To say, 'We know where you live.' "

His was not an isolated experience.

Among nearly 100 sworn statements filed in federal court Friday are more than a dozen accounts like Woo's, in which federal agents deployed to Minnesota singled out protesters, finding the addresses of their homes and showing up there.

The sworn statements describe a remarkable projection of police power.

The Trump administration began the immigration enforcement surge in December, ultimately deploying 3,000 agents to Minnesota in what it said was an effort to root out and deport criminal immigrants who were in the country illegally. Minnesotans quickly responded, miring the federal agents in protests on the Twin Cities' frozen streets and disrupting the city with chaotic clashes.

One Minnesota resident, Emily Beltz, 44, said in her statement that on Jan. 26, she drove to an apartment building in a suburb of Minneapolis where agents were said to be stationed.

An SUV left the scene and Beltz followed. Then, she said, the SUV suddenly turned and sped at her. "I thought the agents were going to deliberately T-bone my car," she wrote.

"Right before it hit me, the unmarked SUV braked hard."

A masked woman leaned out the passenger window and yelled, "Emily, Emily, we're going to take you home." She shouted the address where Beltz lives with her husband and 5-year-old.

Asked for comment on the episodes described in this story, the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond.

Woo's and Beltz's statements were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as its Minnesota affiliate and other lawyers, as part of a civil case they have brought against the Trump administration seeking to protect protesters' rights.

Administration officials have said that protesters are fundamentally misguided and are endangering the lives of law enforcement agents involved in important work.

The fatal shooting of protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents shaded many of the encounters.

One woman, Patty O'Keefe, said in her sworn statement that after she followed an ICE vehicle, her car was pepper-sprayed and an agent smashed its windows open. O'Keefe was taken out of her car, cuffed and taken into the agents' SUV where, she writes in her statement, the agents began to taunt and mock her.

"They mocked my appearance, saying I 'had no good sides.' The one who peppersprayed my car referenced Renee Good, saying, 'You've got to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian [expletive] is dead.' "
There were times at which being followed home was only the beginning.

Katie Henly, 40, works as a project manager in local government in Minneapolis.  On Jan. 21, Henly went out in her car to monitor agents.
She came across two vehicles, an SUV and a truck, that she suspected were driven by federal agents. She texted their license plates to her monitoring group, confirmed her hunch and began following them.
The two vehicles turned onto her street and pulled up to her house. One of the agents in the SUV poked a camera out the window and began taking pictures.

Henly continued to follow the SUV until it reached a stop sign and halted abruptly. Four immigration agents got out. One had the camera and snapped more pictures. Another was holding what Henly described in her sworn statement as a "large gun which he needed two hands to support." She sent video to the New York Times; the gun was an AR-15-style rifle.

"I was more scared of that camera than I was of that gun," Henly said. "The gun goes away. The camera is capturing me, and the unknown of what is happening with my image is scarier to me."
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ICE is using at least two facial recognition programs in Minnesota, as well as tools that allow agents to monitor people's online activity. But Todd Lyons, the acting director of the agency, denied at a congressional hearing Thursday that his organization was contributing to any database.

Henly, when asked if she felt she had at any point overstepped, said no.  "I'm not trying to stop an investigation from happening. That is not my purpose," she said. "My purpose when I went out there that day was to have eyes on the street in case something did happen. That I could be there immediately to document any sort of abduction of a neighbor, get their name, get their phone number, so that they don't disappear."