HSI Deploys Four Undercover Agents Into a 200-Person 'Workers Assembly to Defeat ICE' at Minneapolis's United Labor Center

Opening

On February 15, 2026, HSI’s Team 225 sent four undercover agents into a single public meeting: “Workers Assembly to Defeat ICE and Plan the Next Mass Strike,” held at the United Labor Center building, 312 Central Ave SE, Minneapolis, and sponsored by more than twenty-five organizations. The Report of Investigation names five sponsors specifically — Black Cat Workers Collective, Twin Cities Direct Action (TCDA), Ray Rainbolt Shooting Club, CWA (Communications Workers of America) Local 7250, and Socialist Alternative — without listing the remaining sponsoring organizations by name.

This is the largest single-event deployment of undercover agents documented anywhere in the Doc. 212 discovery set: four UCAs into one room, at a meeting the ROI itself records as drawing approximately 200 people.

The Report of Investigation’s accountability block:

• Composed by: HSI Special Agent James Cutbirth
• Uploaded by: Special Agent Katherine Wespetal
• Approved by: Hakan Catalan, Supervisory Special Agent
• Date approved: March 27, 2026

What Happened

Entry and headcount. UCA 142 arrived at the Labor Center around 3:30 p.m. and entered through doors on the 312 S Central Avenue side, where three volunteers — two wearing orange vests — ushered attendees inside. An older male volunteer in an orange vest asked UCA 142 and a second undercover agent, UCA 9883, how they had heard about the meeting; UCA 142 said a friend had sent a registration link. Both were allowed in and escorted to the second floor by another vested volunteer overseeing the elevators. At registration tables upstairs, UCA 142 checked in. The meeting began at approximately 4:00 p.m.; the ROI records “approximately two hundred (200) people attended.”

Who spoke, as recorded. A Black Cat Collective member described as a teacher told UCA 142 she was friends with a person — redacted in the filed copy — who had worked thirty years as a Delta Air Lines baggage handler and is now a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member. A Black man identified in the report only as “DJ” opened the meeting and set ground rules; he is the only speaker named without redaction. Multiple other speakers are described but redacted, including one recognized by UCA 142 for wearing a Ray Rainbolt-branded hat with a star, who “appeared to hold status and knew a lot of people in attendance.” A woman with the Revolutionary Communists of America spoke about forming a third political party, a “Workers Party,” to run against Democrats and Republicans. Members of a teachers’ union also spoke. Healthcare Workers for Palestine raised a planned National Day of Solidarity.

What was proposed. Attendees discussed a mass day of action around an eviction moratorium on February 27, and a “no work, no school, no shopping” protest for May 1. Demands raised at the meeting, per the ROI, included abolishing ICE, ending state cooperation with ICE, freeing detained community members, dropping charges against protesters, and charging the agents involved in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Speakers also raised abolishing the Department of Homeland Security and jails and prisons generally; the ROI records that “a decision was made to concentrate on the abolishment of ICE and not DHS” — the group narrowing its own public ask, as recorded by the agent sent to surveil it. UCA 142 also recorded discussion of coordinating supporters across cities to respond when ICE operations moved between them, including talk of “targeting businesses that partner with ICE.”

Attendees’ stated posture toward elected officials. The ROI records that attendees “appeared to have a negative opinion of” Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — i.e., this is a federal surveillance report noting that protest organizers were critical of a Democratic governor and a Democratic mayor, underscoring that the operation’s targeting was organizational and tactical, not partisan-directional.

Debrief and recordings. SAs James Cutbirth and Jacob Marquis debriefed UCA 142 at approximately 8:34 p.m. — the debrief itself states it “is not intended to be a verbatim account… and does not memorialize all statements made.” The debrief concluded around 9:00 p.m. Four audio recordings made by UCA 142, timestamped roughly hourly through the afternoon and evening (16:46, 17:46, 18:46, 19:46), were appended to the ROI as separate files.

Why It Matters

Four agents in one room is a scale marker for the whole operation. Elsewhere in the discovery set, single UCAs or pairs attend meetings; here, HSI committed four undercover agents to a single public assembly, a meeting whose stated purpose — organizing labor solidarity against ICE enforcement — was itself the openly advertised agenda, not a concealed one. The event drew 200 attendees and 25-plus sponsoring organizations; the federal response was to seed it with at least four operatives and record it on tape from multiple angles.

This is the labor-and-community convergence point the “Conspiracy” org chart maps. SEIU Local 26, AFL-CIO Minnesota, and CWA-affiliated locals appear as “Council Member” nodes on HSI’s own “The Conspiracy” org chart (Doc. 212-3) alongside Black Cat Workers Collective and TCDA — see the verified transcription in us-v-sant-0-26-cr-00115-doc-212-full-roi-set. This meeting, sponsored by CWA Local 7250 among 25-plus organizations, is a documented instance of that convergence in the actual surveillance record, not just on the chart: a union local, a workers’ collective, and a direct-action group sharing a stage and drawing federal undercover coverage as a single target.

The building itself is a labor institution, not a covert venue. The United Labor Center at 312 Central Ave SE is a longstanding Minneapolis union hall. A public meeting held in a public union building, announced with a registration link, drew a four-agent federal undercover deployment.

What This Does NOT Establish

No individual attendee is named in the unsealed copy of this ROI apart from “DJ,” itself apparently a first-name-only identifier rather than a legal name. All financial, tactical, and political characterizations above are drawn from UCA 142’s post-meeting debrief, explicitly non-verbatim by the report’s own language, and should be attributed as “the agent’s report states” rather than as direct quotation of what occurred in the room. The “over twenty-five” sponsoring-organizations figure is the ROI’s own characterization; only five sponsor names are given in the document itself, and this entry does not assert the identity of the remaining twenty.

Open Questions

• The identities of the roughly twenty unnamed sponsoring organizations beyond the five specified in the ROI.
• “DJ”’s full identity — not established by this document.
• Whether the four audio recordings (or the identities of UCA 9883 and the other two unnamed UCAs present) have surfaced elsewhere in the discovery set — not confirmed in this pass.
• Whether United Labor Center management or any of the named sponsoring organizations (Black Cat Workers Collective, TCDA, CWA Local 7250, Socialist Alternative) have commented publicly on this specific surveillance since the August 2026 unsealing.

Cross-References

• 2026-02-01–hsi-undercover-agent-tcda-art-club-prince-of-peace-roseville
• 2026-04-14–hsi-surveillance-st-johns-church-st-paul-plate-collection
• 2026-04-08–hsi-undercover-operation-zion-lutheran-church-ann-arbor
• 2026-08-13–operation-puppet-master-hsi-infiltrates-minnesota-anti-ice-community
• 2026-02-15–project-whipple-shield-hsi-financial-surveillance-minnesota-unions
• us-v-sant-0-26-cr-00115-doc-212-full-roi-set