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Crime, Law and Justice
MPR News Staff

Feds say they were not conducting 'immigration enforcement' when they surveilled Mpls church

A sign posted outside of a building in snow
A sign outside the University Baptist Church in the Dinkytown area indicating federal agents are not welcome on the premises. Homeland Security allegedly spied on the church by sending an undercover operative to observe and record a May 28, 2026, martial arts class inside the church, potentially violating a court order barring the department from enforcing civil immigration laws at places of worship.
U.S. District Court for Minnesota

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A Department of Justice lawyer says Homeland Security Investigations agents didn’t violate a court order when they conducted surveillance in and around a Minneapolis church earlier this spring.

During a remote hearing held Friday, Richard C. Giles said the government should not be held in contempt. He said agents didn’t violate the order barring immigration enforcement action at University Baptist Church in Dinkytown, because they weren’t enforcing immigration law at the time.

Giles said the intent of the operation was “to protect federal officers.”

He added that the person they focused their attention on at the church, Cam Kennedy, is a “non-alien” and therefore was not the target of any immigration related enforcement.

In a court filing from earlier this week, Giles wrote that agents believed Kennedy “was planning a meeting at University Baptist Church to plan acts of violence against federal officers and employees.”

Kennedy and 14 other defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges that they conspired to impede or injure federal immigration enforcement agents.

University Baptist Church is part of the Alliance of Baptists and the American Baptist Churches USA, which both won the temporary injunction in the District of Massachusetts in February 2026 against the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies forbidding the department from taking “immigration enforcement action” at any of their churches. That injunction, signed by U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, includes banning “arrest, seizure, search, interrogation, questioning, interview or investigation.”

Federal reports released in the conspiracy case against 15 anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota last month show that an undercover federal agent attended a training session of what the government described as a left-wing martial arts group in University Baptist Church’s gymnasium on May 28.

Alliance attorney Kevin Friedl wrote in a motion filed earlier this week that the government’s argument that agents weren’t enforcing immigration law is wrong.

“This argument is sophistry: Even in DHS’s telling, its immigration agents surveilled the church to investigate people believed to be thwarting immigration agents’ ability to enforce the immigration laws as part of a massive immigration enforcement operation. That investigation was plainly taken at least ‘in part’ to enforce the immigration laws.”

Judge Saylor said he’ll consider arguments, but didn’t offer a timeline for when he’ll make a ruling about the churches’ motion seeking to hold the government in contempt.

Reporter Jon Collins contributed to this story.