AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Minnesota, where federal prosecutors have announced criminal charges against 15 people in connection with anti-ICE protests in the Twin Cities earlier this year. The defendants are accused of, quote, “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers,” unquote, during Trump’s so-called Operation Metro Surge, which saw the deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents to Minnesota. Two U.S. citizens were killed by agents in the crackdown: Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the VA nurse.

The federal indictment names two organizations: Direct Action Minnesota and the Black Cat Worker’s Collective, which federal prosecutors have accused, without evidence, of having links to anti-fascist, or “antifa,” groups. Last fall, President Trump categorized antifa as a “domestic terror organization” even though antifa is not an actual group.

Protests took place Tuesday outside the federal courthouse in St. Paul after the charges were announced. U.S. Marshals responded by deploying pepper spray and aerosol grenades.

This is civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, who’s facing federal charges herself over an anti-ICE church protest in January.

NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG: With the 15 people who were arrested this morning for standing up, we have to continue to stand up for them. They put their necks on the lines. They put their bodies on the lines. They put their jobs on the line to stand up for freedom, justice and equality. We need to be standing up for them. We need to be standing up for the Righteous 39. And we need to be standing up for the hundreds of other people still facing state and federal charges for standing up against fascism and authoritarianism.

AMY GOODMAN: That was civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, who was arrested earlier this year for participating in an anti-ICE demonstration at Cities Church in St. Paul, where one of the pastors worked for ICE.

For more, we go to Minneapolis, where we’re joined by Bruce Nestor, past president of the National Lawyers Guild and a criminal defense and immigration attorney. He represents one of the 15 defendants.

Bruce, thanks so much for joining us. Can you explain these charges? And did they come as a surprise to you?

BRUCE NESTOR: Good morning, Amy.

These charges really did not come as a surprise. Here in Minnesota, we stand up and support people that stood up to ICE, as Nekima Levy Armstrong said. They were, you know, fighting for justice and democracy and opposing this brutal invasion. And so, the fact that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is trying to bring new charges against these individuals is not a surprise. It’s part of their attempt to reframe a narrative and to claim that the federal agents were performing lawful functions and under attack, when everything we saw on the ground was different. And so, whether people were monitoring ICE, documenting, photographing, following, blowing whistles or, quite frankly, even impeding ICE, we stand in their corner, and we support them here in Minnesota, because they were here protecting our community.

AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us about your own client, one of 15. And what does it mean to be charged with conspiracy? And the fact that the Trump administration has put antifa — not a clear group, though they call it one — on the terrorist list, what does it mean to say that these people represent antifa organizations?

BRUCE NESTOR: All 15 of the defendants are members of the community, active in mutual aid, union members, workers, neighbors, people who are, many of them, well known. My particular client is a special education teacher. And all of them were involved in activities to try to respond to this federal invasion.

What we’re seeing is this attempt, from this national security memorandum last September, is to try to break off and isolate groups of people by labeling them domestic terrorists, by labeling them antifa, and trying to allow federal government to target and repress certain groups of people based on these allegations. And one of the ways to do that is with this conspiracy charge. Conspiracy is a prosecutor’s tool that allows them to try to hold everybody in a group accountable for what they claim a certain individual may have done. And what we see in this 94-page indictment is these references to speaking tours that people went on, describing what they were seeing in Minnesota. One individual is charged with stalking just for following an ICE agent, with no threats, no other behavior, just following an ICE agent. So, the conspiracy is really an attempt to broaden the net of federal law enforcement and to expand the ability of the federal government to target our movement and to foster repression.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s be clear: These 15 people have been charged, but the people who were responsible for the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have not been charged, and the federal government is not cooperating with state officials in investigating their death?

BRUCE NESTOR: That’s correct. The U.S. Attorney’s Office here in Minnesota has done nothing to investigate and hold accountable the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. They have done everything they can to frustrate an investigation of that nature. They haven’t done anything to hold ICE officers accountable for the widespread violence that we saw committed by federal agents, dragging people out of their cars, dragging people with disabilities out of their cars, breaking windows, spreading tear gas in residential neighborhoods.

This is the same U.S. Attorney’s Office that brought charges against 36 people in January. Over half of those charges have been dismissed outright. Another 11 are on agreements where the charges will be dismissed if people behave for six months. There’s a complete failure of this U.S. Attorney’s Office to hold the real perpetrators of violence accountable. And in fact, the U.S. Attorney’s Office experienced mass resignations in January of this year when the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Daniel Rosen, wanted to investigate Renee Good’s family and friends for antifa links instead of investigating her killer.

AMY GOODMAN: So, as you referred to, the Justice Department also charged six people in Illinois with conspiracy over protests last year at the Broadview Jail, but the government later dropped the charges amidst revelations of serious prosecutorial misconduct. Kat Abughazaleh, one of the six charged at Broadview — she was also running for Congress at the time — posted this on social media Tuesday about the charges in Minnesota. She wrote, quote, “As the government raids 'antifa groups' [quote-unquote] in Minneapolis with the SAME charges levied against myself and the rest of the Broadview Six, we need to be asking how they got this indictment. And as charges (hopefully) get dropped, we must remember the process is the punishment,” end-quote. We interviewed Kat earlier this month, right after the charges against her were dropped. This is some of what she said.

KAT ABUGHAZALEH: The administration wants to make you fear speaking out. They want to make you fear the secret police, and the idea that if you disagree with them, that you could not just face prosecution, but a lot worse. But that’s the thing. There’s a lot more of us than there are of them. And this case has shown, in spectacular fashion, because we saw it to the end, how the government is not just being incompetent, but outright insidious in the prosecution of regular citizens.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can tell us, Bruce Nestor, about the significance of the Broadview case? The judge was furious when she got the transcripts of the grand jury hearings. The grand jury originally voted not to indict the six, and then people were disqualified for their opposition. Usually you don’t see these grand jury transcripts. Now they have been made public. If you can explain: Is this a continuation of that? All the charges were dropped, but, as Kat said, the process is the punishment, what happened to these six people when they’re taking on the federal government for a year.

BRUCE NESTOR: Yeah, the Broadview 6 is really the most egregious example of misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that we’ve seen in terms of the misconduct in front of the grand jury. And normally that type of misconduct is hidden from view, because we don’t get to see the grand jury transcripts.

What we’re really seeing is an expansion of these conspiracy charges across the country. I think the first one was in Plainview, Texas, for this noise demonstration outside a ICE detention facility, where it was expanded to prosecute all members of a political collective in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We saw the use of conspiracy charges in Spokane, Washington, to prosecute multiple people who were really only acting at a demonstration together, without any evidence of an agreement or a conspiracy.

And I think Kat is right: The point of this is to spread fear to try to divide us and to try to get people to say, “These are the bad people, and, you know, we’re just — but we also have to pull out, or we may get lumped into this group of people.” So, it’s to spread fear and to encourage people not to stand up to ICE. And then it’s to punish the people put into these federal prosecutions. Again, in Minnesota, two-thirds of the cases they’ve brought so far have been dismissed, but the financial toll, the toll on people’s mental health, just the grinding process of taking on the federal government, being charged with a crime, the fear for your future, again, that’s all part of making it so difficult for the people charged that they then send a message to other people: Don’t stand up to the brutality, the authoritarianism and the growing fascism of the federal government.

AMY GOODMAN: Bruce Nestor, we want to thank you for being with us, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, criminal defense and immigration attorney in Minneapolis, represents one of the Minneapolis 15, who have been charged by the federal government for anti-ICE activity.

Up next, what will the U.S.-Iran deal mean for Israel’s war on Lebanon? We go to Tel Aviv to speak with Ori Goldberg. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Streets of Minneapolis,” Bruce Springsteen, performing at Democracy Now!’s 30th anniversary event in the historic Riverside Church in Harlem.