Four days after federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation. But as it turns out, the probe had nothing to do with those who had fatally shot the nurse.
Rather, as The New York Times reported last week, DHS launched an examination of “several left-leaning political organizations” that officials accused of helping to organize local protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The Times’ report, pointing to DHS records, added that there was “an expansive covert surveillance operation in which undercover agents spied on protesters and organizers at meetings held online, as well as in libraries, parks and churches, taking down not only what they said, but also their names and sometimes license plate numbers.”
A week later, that reference to houses of worship continues to stand out. The Religion News Service reported:
The latest source of friction centers on federal court filings that emerged last week, which state that DHS agents, as part of an investigation referred to as Operation Puppet Master, surveilled five churches in Minnesota and Michigan since December, with agents often operating both outside and inside church buildings. The documents, part of a federal case stemming from June charges against 15 immigration-enforcement protesters (none of them church officials), appear to be DHS’s own internal investigation records. The filings describe agents investigating events hosted by the churches ….
The controversy surrounding the events that unfolded in Minnesota earlier this year is of great national significance, but I’m struck by the underlying detail: According to the administration’s own court filings, federal agents launched a surveillance operation that included churches.
I emphasize this because a few months into Donald Trump’s second term, the president’s team launched a task force that would, according to the Republican White House, eradicate “anti-Christian bias” within the federal government. At a launch event in April 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi began by attacking Joe Biden, who Bondi said had “abused and targeted Christians.”
The slander was baseless. And a year later, when the task force tried to bolster its accusations with a lengthy written report, the allegations against the former president and his Democratic administration largely fell apart.
But more than a year after Team Trump started making a concerted effort to convince Americans that Biden and his White House “abused and targeted Christians,” it’s the incumbent president and his Republican administration that continue to clash with the faith community — up to and including surveillance of churches.
This comes a month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents hauled off a nun who was wearing her habit and walking down a public sidewalk en route to Sunday Mass.
Fortunately, the nun was released from federal detention after a backlash from members of Congress, but this was hardly a rare clash between the Republican administration and the faith community. In fact, the incident came on the heels of Team Trump suing a Catholic diocese in New Mexico to seize 14 acres of land for additional border barriers.
There have been related controversies surrounding the Pentagon’s list of officially recognized religions, Trump picking fights with Pope Leo XIV, the administration stripping funding from Catholic charities, a White House offensive against the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde for her defense of marginalized communities, and instances in which federal agents have shot faith leaders with pepper balls.
If these developments had unfolded during a Democratic administration, is there any doubt Republicans and conservative media outlets would have launched hysterical campaigns about the “Democratic war on religion”?
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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