Leaked Memo Exposes How DHS Is Building a Database on Protesters

The Department of Homeland Security is collecting information on Minnesotans protesting ICE.

Federal agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations assigned to Minneapolis received a memo earlier this month asking them to collect identifying information on protesters and so-called agitators, CNN reported Tuesday.

Federal agents from the agencies were asked to fill out a form titled “intel collection non-arrests,” and “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,” according to communications obtained by CNN.

Among the likely subjects of this massive surveillance scheme was Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was killed by Customs and Border Protection agents in broad daylight. A few days before he was killed, Pretti was beaten by a group of federal agents he was monitoring, and suffered a broken rib. A source told CNN that federal agents knew Pretti’s name, but did not clarify if he was in this database.

Last week, a masked ICE agent warned a woman filming their activities in Portland, Maine, that her information would be entered into a “nice little database” that would label her a domestic terrorist. This week, federal agents have reportedly started making house calls on volunteer ICE watchers they hope to intimidate.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, a well-documented liar, claimed that her agency was not compiling a database of so-called “domestic terrorists,” but that it was “standard protocol” to collect information on law-breaking “violent agitators” in order to “advance prosecution.”

“We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement,” McLaughlin said. “Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.”

It seems that federal agents have lost the plot on what obstruction actually entails. Federal agents have aggressively approached citizen ICE watchers simply monitoring their operations, threatening to arrest them—or worse. And DHS’s claims of assault against federal officers have continued to crumble under the slightest scrutiny.

Federal officers stationed in Minnesota don’t seem to be interested in lowering the temperature.

An ICE agent issued a chilling warning to a legal observer Tuesday, informing them that if “you raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”

“Are you serious? You said if I raise my voice, you will erase my voice?” the observer asked incredulously.

“Yes, exactly,” the agent responded.

Within the last three weeks, agents with ICE and Customs and Border Protection have shot and killed two U.S. citizens: Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti and award-winning poet Renee Nicole Good.

The agencies have also deported people from the U.S. without due process, ripped children from their parents, and ushered thousands of untrained agents into cities and neighborhoods where they are not wanted.

A CBS News poll published days before Pretti’s killing on Saturday in Minneapolis found that 61 percent of surveyed Americans felt that ICE agents were “too tough” when stopping and detaining people.

In the face of ICE’s seemingly endless violence, thousands of Minnesotans have risen up in protest, creating a call for change so loud that even Washington couldn’t ignore it.

By Monday, Donald Trump had unveiled a new plan for Minnesota in a flailing Hail Mary attempt to salvage his increasingly unpopular immigration agenda. In a post on Truth Social, Trump announced that border czar Tom Homan would be shipped to Minnesota to run ICE and CBP. Customs and Border Protection boss Greg Bovino, on the other hand, got the boot.

Meanwhile, the president almost immediately threw the de facto leaders of his deportation scheme—namely, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller—under the bus in order to save his own skin, attempting to frame himself in front of reporters as a level-headed witness to the ICE killings rather than the primary and active architect of the agency’s recent overreach.

Slain Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti had his rib broken by ICE agents just one week before he was shot to death. He was also potentially part of a massive surveillance database that agents are rumored to be collecting on protesters in Minneapolis.

An unnamed source told CNN that Pretti’s earlier altercation with federal agents occurred when he pulled over and got out of his car to observe ICE agents running after a family. He immediately began blowing his whistle and yelling. He was later taken down by five agents, with one leaning on his back and breaking his rib, before they released him back into the street.  

“That day, he thought he was going to die,” CNN’s source said. CNN reviewed Pretti’s medication records, which were consistent with the idea that he had broken his rib.

It’s not clear whether Border Patrol agents recognized Pretti before killing him this past weekend. But a DHS memo earlier this month told agents in Minneapolis to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” A source also told CNN that federal agents knew Pretti’s name, without clarifying if he was in this database.

“One thing I’m pushing for right now … we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault, we’re going to make them famous,” border czar Tom Homan said two weeks ago. “We’re going to put their face on TV. We’re going to let their employers, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, know who these people are.”

From the “fucking bitch” comment after Renee Good’s shooting to this news about Pretti, it seems clear that federal immigration agents aren’t simply good guys who are operating under duress of the mob—they’re vindictive, trigger-happy, and they’re remembering the faces of anyone who stands up to them. 

Federal officers in Minnesota are either completely ignorant of the severity of their violence, or they simply don’t care.

Agents staying at a Springhill Suites in Maple Grove—a suburban city about 20 minutes away from Minneapolis—were filmed by journalist Laura Jedeed laughing at protesters from a third-floor window Monday evening. Then, one of the agents pulled down his shorts and pressed his bare ass against the glass, mooning the distressed crowd protesting below.

Within the last three weeks, agents with ICE and Customs and Border Protection have shot and killed two U.S. citizens: Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti and award-winning poet Renée Nicole Good.

Immigration agents have resorted to arresting practically anybody—including U.S. citizens and children—in order to satisfy Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 or more arrests per day.

In doing so, they’ve struck terror and fury into the souls of American communities, and the cold-blooded federal overreach has sparked nationwide protests and local economic blackouts.

Local politicians—including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—have demanded that ICE and CBP exit their cities and states, arguing that the federal agents have done more harm than good. In 2025, before Good’s death, the agency killed 32 people—it’s deadliest year in more than two decades.

In an attempt to defend their own city from the state-sponsored violence, some Minneapolis residents have opted to openly carry their firearms, brandishing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Locals have formed neighborhood watches to follow ICE vehicles, banging pots and pans and screaming to alert others when agents enter their residential neighborhoods.

The public backlash has rattled conservative lawmakers, donors, and even Donald Trump, who appears to be peeling away from Miller and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in an attempt to salvage his immigration agenda.

The Justice Department is not pursuing a civil rights probe into Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, with the Department of Homeland Security instead investigating its own officers. 

MS NOW reports that Customs and Border Protection will be investigating whether the agents followed department policy, while Homeland Security Investigations, which normally investigates human trafficking and drug rings as part of ICE, will be investigating whether Pretti broke any laws before being killed.

Normally, the FBI would handle such an investigation, considering that it has the lab facilities and investigators experienced with shootings. In fact, Border Patrol agents requested the FBI’s help to gather evidence after the shooting, but in the end, “All evidence, excluding firearms and casings, were turned over to DHS,” according to an FBI memo.

The DOJ appears to be following the same playbook it used after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. In that case, too, the DOJ announced there would be no civil rights investigation. 

“This is absolutely the kind of investigation that should be led by the FBI as it has the authority, experience, capability, and credibility to conduct a thorough, objective, and unbiased investigation,” MS NOW contributor and former FBI Agent Chris O’Leary said. “Unfortunately the current Director of the FBI and leadership in DOJ are blocking this from happening, and are therefore part of the problem and not part of the solution.”

Questions have already been raised as to how evidence, such as Pretti’s phone and handgun, have been handled by the federal government, with the government even arguing in court that they have the right to destroy evidence. Now, the fact that DHS and Border Patrol will essentially be investigating themselves seems to indicate the agents who killed Pretti will soon be exonerated. 

State authorities say that the federal government has not shared evidence with them, and current and former investigators with the FBI and DOJ say that the government is already violating DOJ policy and previous practices, according to MS NOW. 

“The fact that this investigation has already been taken by the agency involved speaks to them not wanting any outside agency having access to the evidence nor the ability to take statements from the agents involved,” former FBI agent and MS NOW contributor Rob D’Amico said. “No matter how good an investigation was conducted it gives the perception of a cover-up if … charges aren’t brought against the agents.”  

Federal agents in Maine are now threatening ICE watchers at their homes.

Liz Eisele McLellan, a volunteer ICE watcher monitoring the intensifying federal operations in Maine, told the Portland Press Herald that a federal agent came to her home to threaten her. “It was one of the scariest things that ever happened to me,” McLellan said.

McLellan said she spoke to one agent, while three cars blocked the street outside. “This is a warning,” one agent said, according to McLellan. “We know you live right here.”

McLellan said she called 911 and recounted what had happened to the dispatcher, who told her she should comply with orders from federal agents.

Last week, a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent warned a woman filming their activities in Portland that her information would be entered into a “nice little database” that would label her a domestic terrorist.

This comes just weeks after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of two, while she was observing federal immigration operations in Minneapolis. The Press Herald report came out the day before CBP agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse who was attending a Minneapolis protest in the wake of Good’s death.

Two people who work as volunteers in Minneapolis, driving supplies to immigrants hiding in their homes from federal agents and following ICE vehicles, told The Atlantic that agents had gone to their homes to threaten them too.

While legal threats against observers may sound absurd, a recent security threats assessment leaked from the Department of Homeland Security revealed the department’s intention to broaden the definition of domestic terrorism.

Federal officials claimed to have arrested more than 200 people as part of their operations in Maine, and that they are targeting the worst of the worst. But, as is the case in other cities targeted by President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement operations, local officials and community members say that people without criminal records are being detained too.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says that the Trump administration is misrepresenting a phone call the two had following Carney’s remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos. It was clear—it was a broader set of issues—that Canada was the first country to understand the change in U.S. trade policy that he had initiated. And we’re responding to that,” Carney told reporters Tuesday.

The night before, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed on Fox News that Carney was “very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos” in a phone call he had with President Trump earlier in the day. Over the weekend, Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs against Canadian goods if Carney finalized a trade deal with China.

China and Canada did reach an agreement on canola oil exports from Canada and Chinese electric vehicles, but Carney ruled out a free trade agreement with Beijing on Monday, and flatly denied Bessent’s description of his conversation with Trump Tuesday morning. 

“We had a very good conversation on a wide range of subjects, ranging from the situation in Ukraine, in Venezuela, Arctic security. We discussed as well what Canada is doing, positively, and this is the context of our discussion, what Canada is doing positively to build new partnerships around the world,” Carney added. 

It’s pretty clear that Bessent is trying to save Trump’s dignity after Carney warned last week at  Davos that the global trade order is in the middle of a “rupture” thanks to Trump’s economic bullying. Trump did not take the speech well, calling Canada ungrateful for all of the “freebies” he claimed the U.S. has provided over the years, and now Bessent is trying to paint Carney as regretful. However, it’s Bessent who is actually causing economic damage with his words. 

Prolific pianist and composer Phillip Glass is boycotting the Kennedy Center, adding his name to a growing list of performers who have pulled their performances in the wake of President Trump’s hostile takeover.

“After thoughtful consideration, I have decided to withdraw my Symphony No. 15 ‘Lincoln’ from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony,” he announced in a statement Tuesday.

“Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership.”

That “current leadership” would be none other than Board of Trustees Chair Donald Trump, whose overhaul of the once esteemed arts and culture venue has struggled mightily of late. Big names like Issa Rae and Rhiannon Giddens pulled out of shows, and as of last fall, ticket sales at the Kennedy Center were the worst they’ve been since the Covid-19 pandemic. In December, the Kennedy Center was forced to cancel its annual New Year’s Eve concert as artists pulled out to boycott Trump changing the center’s name to “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

President Donald Trump decided to abandon regulations protecting elderly residents, after nursing home executives poured millions into a pro-Trump super PAC, The New York Times reported Tuesday.  

In early December, the Department of Health and Human Services repealed a federal provision requiring nursing homes to increase staffing levels in order to reduce the rates of resident neglect. In a statement, HHS claimed that new staffing rules “disproportionately burdened facilities.”

That decision can be traced back to millions of dollars directed toward one of Trump’s favorite super PACs, a donation that won a group of nursing home executives a meeting with the president. 

After Trump’s gargantuan budget bill won nursing home companies a 10-year moratorium on the Biden-era staffing requirement, a group of industry executives wanted to try to get the rule permanently revoked—and knew exactly how to get the president’s attention. 

Beginning in August 2025, nursing home executives donated a total of roughly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by the president’s allies, according to campaign finance disclosures. Later that month, a group of the largest donors joined industry lobbyists at Trump’s golf club outside of Washington, D.C., in order to plead their case to the president himself.  

The group of executives “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents—or possibly close their doors altogether,” according to Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, who recounted the meeting in a message to the Times.

Less than a month later, federal prosecutors stopped defending the rule from legal challenges mounted by nursing home companies, and in December, they scrapped the rule entirely. A White House spokesperson dismissed the claims of corruption, saying that repealing the rule was a “commonsense, anti-red tape policy decision.”

Some of the biggest donors to MAGA Inc. in August 2025 included Pruitt Health Corporation, which operates more than 100 eldercare facilities across the southeast United States. Pruitt paid a whopping $750,000 to the super PAC.

Several other companies and executives donated $100,000, including Reliance Health Care Inc., which operates more than two dozen locations across Arkansas and Missouri; Northshore Health, which operates more than 70 facilities across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and North Dakota; and Teddy Price, the administrator of Central Management, which operates 21 nursing facilities across Louisiana.

There is perhaps reason to believe that even more corruption took place through MAGA Inc., which raked in an unprecedented $198.9 million between Trump’s election and June 2025—far too early to be tied to any upcoming election cycle. The super PAC was previously run by Taylor Budowich, who went on to join Trump’s White House communications team.

Even Republicans can see that there’s nothing normal about how the Trump administration has handled Alex Pretti’s killing.

Republican Senator Rand Paul took to social media Tuesday to highlight ICE and CBP’s long leash Tuesday, pointing out on X that no other law enforcement agency would permit offending officers to walk free after an extrajudicial killing.

“Local police routinely put officers involved in deadly shootings on administrative leave until an independent investigation is concluded,” Paul wrote. “That should happen immediately.”

He further scolded the Department of Homeland Security for its attempts to write off Pretti as a violent criminal, arguing that the agency had failed to accomplish the bare minimum to calm the tensions boiling among the American public.

“I can’t recall ever hearing a police chief immediately describing the victim as a ‘domestic terrorist’ or a ‘would-be assassin,’” Paul continued. “For calm to be restored, an independent investigation is the least that should be done.”

Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked in Veterans Affairs, was slain Saturday while he protested the death of another U.S. citizen, Renee Nicole Good, who was shot by agents weeks earlier.

Pretti was assisting a woman who had been shoved by a masked officer, when he was grappled by several agents and thrown to the ground. At least seven agents held him down or knelt on his back, and another agent drew his gun and shot Pretti. Widely circulated video of the incident that was filmed from multiple angles captured audio of 10 gunshots ringing out within five seconds.

In the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s death, top Homeland Security officials attempted to induce national amnesia, retroactively labeling him a domestic terrorist while insisting that he had “approached officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun,” forcing officers to fire “defensive shots.” They also blamed Pretti for lawfully owning a gun, suggesting that his death was justified since he had a weapon on him.

Pretti’s and Good’s needless deaths—and their dystopian handling by Trump officials—have made conservatives and their longtime donors recoil from Donald Trump’s immigration agenda for the first time since he returned to office. Wary of public backlash, Republicans are attempting to remap their routes toward midterm elections, steering clear of the polarizing subject. The National Rifle Association, meanwhile, made an unexpected strike against the administration when it tore into Customs and Border Protection commander Greg Bovino for suggesting that Second Amendment rights “don’t count” for protesters.

By Monday, it appeared that Trump was finally grasping the need to overhaul the administration’s messaging. He announced that border czar Tom Homan would seize control of ICE and CBP operations in Minneapolis, effectively ousting Bovino in the process.

But not everybody had caught wind of the makeover: DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin still wasn’t willing to backtrack on the department’s smear campaign against Pretti during an interview with Fox News Tuesday, sidestepping questions by the network as to whether DHS still deemed the nurse to be a “domestic terrorist.”