Federal officers had already been arresting Minneapolis activists for months, but the Trump administration’s sweeping indictments of fifteen union members and leaders in June especially turned heads. The charges are centered around 18 U.S.C. § 372: Conspiracy to Impede or Injure a Federal Officer, allegations that could lead to astounding criminal sentences lasting decades.

These arrests came as a dozen defendants were fighting for their freedom after attending a demonstration at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, near Fort Worth, where one attendee fired on an officer. Vague connections, membership in Signal chats, and, in one case, allegedly moving a box of zines was all the evidence of collusion needed to put some of them away for life.

But in Minneapolis, no officer was injured, and none of those facing the stack of federal charges are alleged to have done anything that thousands of others around the Twin Cities, and millions of others around the country, have not done, such as planning for demonstrations, organizing their neighbors using encrypted chat threads, and blockading roads in a desperate effort to slow the deportation machine.