HSI Special Operations Group Surveils St. John's Church in St. Paul, Runs License-Plate Checks on Meeting Attendees' Vehicles

Opening

On April 14, 2026, at approximately 1715 hours, a Homeland Security Investigations Special Operations Group — SOG 2207 — set up perimeter surveillance around “St. John’s Church” in St. Paul, Minnesota, ahead of a Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN) group meeting scheduled inside from 1800 to 1930 hours. An undercover agent (UC) attended the meeting itself; the SOG’s job was the perimeter — watching who came and went, and running the license plates of the cars they arrived in.

This is the church separate five-church reporting has identified as St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, St. Paul — see 2026-08-15–dhs-surveilled-five-midwest-churches-saylor-injunction-violation-university-baptist. The ROI itself gives only “St. John’s Church” with the street address redacted; the fuller identification comes from Religion News Service’s and MPR’s court-records review of the same discovery set.

The Report of Investigation is unredacted on its accountability block:

• Composed by: Acting Group Supervisor Josh Schottenfeld
• Uploaded by: Special Agent Katherine Wespetal
• Approved by: Hakan Catalan, Supervisory Special Agent
• Date approved: April 23, 2026 — nine days after the operation

What Happened

The tasking. SOG 2207 agents positioned themselves around the church starting at 1715 hours, ahead of the meeting’s 1800 start. At 1802 hours, SA Bradley Grant confirmed the undercover agent had been dropped off near the church and was approaching on foot.

The plate collection. At approximately 1830 hours, SA Daniel Malik (driving) and SA Michael Leung (passenger) drove into a parking lot on the southwest corner of an address redacted in the filed document, in St. Paul, to collect license plates of vehicles parked there. The ROI states plainly why that lot: “Information obtained from past meetings indicated individuals attending the meeting were instructed to park in this lot.” SA Leung recorded two videos of the lot, logged in the report as Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2, and ran registration checks on the vehicles present. A note appended to the ROI states the results of those checks were compiled into a separate document, also produced to the defense, titled “Registration_checks_from_4.14.26_surveillance.docx” — meaning a full roster of vehicle owners who parked at a church for a community meeting was assembled as a distinct federal work product.

An attendee confronted the agents, and was noted for it. At approximately 1840, SA Marco Saltarelli and SA Jason Prasnikar, seated in Saltarelli’s government vehicle, were approached by an unidentified man who asked if they were ICE. Saltarelli pointed to a safety vest and hard hat in the vehicle and told him they were not. The man said okay, but that he would “make sure their license plate was cleared” — bystander counter-surveillance, itself now preserved in a federal investigative file.

Close of surveillance. At 1948 hours, SA Richard Greene confirmed the undercover agent was clear of the area. Surveillance was terminated at 1950. The report closes: “This investigation continues.”

Why It Matters

This is a perimeter operation, not an infiltration narrative — and that is the point. Unlike the Ann Arbor ROI (see 2026-04-08–hsi-undercover-operation-zion-lutheran-church-ann-arbor), which recorded what was said and by whom inside a sanctuary, this report documents a different apparatus layer: six named agents deployed to watch a church’s parking lot, log video of vehicles, and run plates — pure movement- and identity-mapping, assembled into a database of who showed up to a community meeting at a church, deliverable as a stand-alone spreadsheet-equivalent document.

Six agents, one operation, one meeting. Grant, Malik, Leung, Saltarelli, Prasnikar, and Greene are all named for actions taken in service of a single evening’s surveillance of a single meeting. None has a public profile independent of this filing. Their names are public because a defense attorney moved to unseal this discovery, not because any of them made a public statement.

Timing relative to the injunction. Per the five-church accounting, this operation falls after Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV’s February 13, 2026 preliminary injunction in New England Synod, ELCA v. DHS barring warrantless HSI investigative activity inside, at the entrance to, or on property adjacent to plaintiff churches. Whether St. John the Evangelist Episcopal falls within a plaintiff synod’s coverage has not been independently confirmed in this entry — Zion Lutheran in Ann Arbor did not, because it sits in a non-plaintiff synod; the Episcopal Church was not a plaintiff denomination in that case at all, which would place St. John’s operation outside the injunction’s protection on different grounds than Ann Arbor’s. This distinction is flagged as an open question, not resolved here.

What This Does NOT Establish

The ROI names no attendee, records no in-meeting content, and offers no evidence about what was discussed inside the church. Everything above is limited to what SOG 2207 did outside it: perimeter watch, license-plate collection, and registration checks. No claim is made here about the content of the DAMN meeting itself, because this ROI does not describe it.

Open Questions

• Whether St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, St. Paul, falls within the coverage of the Saylor injunction — unresolved; the Episcopal Church was not among the plaintiff denominations in New England Synod, ELCA v. DHS.
• The identity of the parking lot’s exact address — redacted in the filed ROI.
• Whether the vehicle registration-check document (“Registration_checks_from_4.14.26_surveillance.docx”) has itself been produced in full to the defense or remains under separate seal — not established by this ROI alone.
• Whether St. John the Evangelist’s clergy or vestry have spoken publicly about this specific operation — not found in the sources checked for this entry.

Cross-References

• 2026-04-08–hsi-undercover-operation-zion-lutheran-church-ann-arbor
• 2026-08-15–dhs-surveilled-five-midwest-churches-saylor-injunction-violation-university-baptist
• 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