An April 2 anti-ICE speaking event at Co-Prosperity, an arts space in Chicago's Bridgeport neighbourhood, was monitored by federal agents and local officers, according to a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) report filed in federal court on October 12 and reported by WIRED on October 16. The report says HSI investigators in Minnesota requested assistance from Chicago agents to identify people attending the speaking tour and obtain video and audio recordings; the event was part of a tour about resistance to immigration enforcement in Minnesota, organised by the collective Crimethinc, and its speakers included activists from the Twin Cities.

Per the four-page HSI report, the surveillance team was a joint task force of 14 officers — six local officers and eight HSI Chicago agents — drawn from Chicago police, the Cook and Kane county sheriffs, and officers from Aurora and Downers Grove, according to WIRED's account reproduced by InfoSecToday and WDC News 6. A plainclothes Aurora officer was dropped off at the venue, and an undercover HSI agent entered minutes later after the Aurora officer confirmed no security checks at the door. The undercover agent carried a recorder and transmitter and transmitted a live recording for about an hour until transmission was lost; recordings were shared with case agents through Microsoft Teams on April 7, the report says. Outside, the team logged approximately 219 vehicles parked in the vicinity and ran license-plate checks — the court summary notes those vehicles were observed nearby and the document does not establish that every vehicle belonged to someone attending the talk. A Chicago police task-force detective also requested footage from a police camera outside the venue; the report describes the request and its expected processing time, without establishing that the footage was obtained.

The surveillance feeds a federal conspiracy investigation into 15 Twin Cities activists — the "Minnesota 15" — facing felony charges over resistance to Operation Metro Surge, the immigration surge in Minnesota, according to WIRED. Remarks by a speaker at the April 2 talk about building rapid-response networks are included in the federal indictment, InfoSecToday reported. Local officers join the Chicago-area HSI task force on a full- or part-time basis for two years, records produced by the Kane County Sheriff's office show.

Chicago police defended their participation to WIRED as criminal enforcement permitted under Illinois law, not immigration enforcement — Illinois sanctuary law limits local participation in immigration enforcement. A source told WIRED that no one in the Chicago Police Department's chain of command or its general counsel was notified about the April operation, and that the department believed it was connected to a federal racketeering investigation. The ACLU of Illinois called for a full accounting: spokesperson Ed Yohnka described the surveillance as "very troubling" and said local law enforcement should account for their role and their participation in joint task forces with federal agencies, according to WIRED and Scapi Magazine's summary of the filing. The Aurora and Downers Grove police departments and the Kane County Sheriff did not respond to requests for comment, and ICE told WIRED it would neither confirm nor deny details of past or present investigations. The HSI report is the agency's own account; the filing contains no judicial ruling on the lawfulness of the surveillance. Sources: HSI report filed in federal court October 12, 2026 (via CourtListener, summarised by Scapi Magazine); WIRED, October 16, 2026 (via InfoSecToday and WDC News 6 summaries).