The Aurora Police Department, Downer’s Grove Police Department, and Kane County Sheriff did not respond to requests for comment.
The HSI Chicago surveillance team logged 219 vehicles parked in the vicinity of Co-Prosperity. Several subjects already under investigation, including some of the speakers on the tour, were identified by ICE. Ryan Wasson, a Kane County Sheriff’s deputy, spotted a hooded, masked man outside the venue removing an object from his trunk. Running the license plate, Wasson identified the man as the subject of an October 4 arrest during Operation Midway Blitz whose prosecution had been declined by assistant US attorney Christopher Veatch.
Outside the venue, agents Joel Sullivan and Michael Finerty spotted an unnamed subject already under investigation for running “an anti-ICE Signal chat and group called ‘ICE Cream Patrol’” and noted an orange Hyundai had been documented near two March 2026 protests outside the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois. The surveillance lasted for roughly two hours until 8:30 pm local time on April 2.
Nick Nunez, a veteran Chicago Police detective detailed to the joint task force, filed a request to obtain surveillance footage from a CPD camera outside the venue; the request would take a week to complete, and it is unclear whether he received footage. All information obtained during the April investigation in Chicago was shared with HSI St. Paul/Minnesota, according to the agency’s report.
Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, calls the surveillance of the Bridgeport gathering “very troubling,” adding that local law enforcement should make a full accounting of their role in the incident and participation in joint task forces with federal agencies.
“No one should be subjected to surveillance and infiltration by law enforcement simply for engaging in constitutionally protected activity, including the ability to gather together and express dissatisfaction with public policy,” Yohnka says. “It is also a moment for local law enforcement to reexamine their participation in task forces with the Trump administration, especially any group focused on combatting ‘terrorism.’”
The April 2 meeting in Bridgeport is not the only out-of-state gathering spied upon by HSI during the Minnesota 15 investigation. Reports obtained by defense attorneys through discovery show that events on the same Crimethinc tour in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Seattle, Washington, were monitored in person by local HSI agents, who reported the speech’s contents back to their colleagues in Minneapolis.
