• The Justice Department has charged 15 people in Minnesota with conspiring to impede immigration officers.
• The defendants are part of two Minneapolis-based antifa groups, federal officials said.
• Charges follow a period of heightened tensions and protests against an ICE crackdown in the state.

At a press conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday, June 16, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against 15 people for allegedly conspiring to impede or injure an officer during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration crackdown in Minnesota from about January to June of 2026.

Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said the alleged conspiracy related to efforts by two Minneapolis-based antifa groups that violently opposed law enforcement. “Antifa” is a collective term for an assortment of groups in an anti-fascist movement, which President Donald Trump in September designated as a major terrorist organization.

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“These defendants have been charged not for what they said, but for what they did,” Rosen said.

“They all joined an agreement, a conspiracy, to interfere with lawful immigration enforcement operations,” he added. “The conspiracy was not to interfere by their voice, but to do it by force.”

Lawyers for the defendants weren’t immediately identifiable.

An indictment unsealed June 16 alleges the defendants tried to halt immigration enforcement operations with “hard blockades” such as wood, leaf blowers and vehicles to impede officer movement, and with “soft blockades” such as homemade shields to resist and wedge between officers.

One defendant, Kyle Wagner, is also charged with soliciting another person to commit a crime of violence. During the June 16 press conference, Rosen played a video that he said was of Wagner.

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“My name is Kyle, I’m antifa, and there’s so much rage in me that I’ve had to record this, like, 15 times, trying to get the message out,” the man in the video said.

“Not talking about peaceful protests anymore. We’re not talking about having polite conversations anymore,” the man said in the video, adding that he was speaking specifically to his followers.

“Get your f—— guns and stop these f—— people,” the man added.

Charges follow immigration crackdown and mass protests

In December, the Trump administration began a surge of thousands of federal agents to Minnesota as part of an immigration crackdown. That sparked heightened tensions in the state, with some locals organizing against the crackdown, including by using whistles to alert others to approaching immigration agents.

Interactions between federal immigration enforcement agents and protesters turned increasingly heated and even violent in January, after federal law enforcement shot and killed Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good while she was driving a car, and later shot and killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti, after tackling him and discovering a gun that, in videos of the incident, appeared to be secured in his waistband.

On Jan. 16, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media that the FBI was working around the clock to crack down on “violent rioters.”

In February, the Trump administration announced an end to the surge.

Since then, the Justice Department has brought charges against dozens of defendants for allegedly interfering with or assaulting federal agents during the surge, but about a third of those cases have been dismissed, according to an analysis by The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Asked about cases that have been dismissed or failed in some way at the June 16 press conference, U.S. Attorney Rosen stood by the cases his office has brought.