Organizers in Minneapolis long suspected they were being surveilled by the federal government during the height of the winter protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was not until a court filing on Thursday, however, that the youth-led Sunrise Movement and other groups learned the depths of infiltration.
The Sunrise Movement has long preached nonviolence even as it pursues aggressive tactics, such as making a racket outside of the hotels where ICE agents sleep.
But the group’s public commitment to peaceful protest did not spare it from a months-long, aggressive campaign of government snooping that included ICE agents attending its meetings and protests undercover, subpoenas of its financial records, and at least one apparent attempt to entice an organizer into backing more confrontational tactics.
Sunrise Movement Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in an interview Thursday that the government’s tactics are a sign that the Trump administration is losing the battle for public opinion.
“What this is meant to do is scare protesters and scare people away from joining protest groups,” she said. “It is very essential that we remember that actually what we are doing is incredibly normal, it is incredibly popular, and we cannot let ourselves be scared out of organizing.”
