Swapped, covered and removed: The license plate tactics ICE is using in Minnesota

A Jeep Cherokee left the Henry Bishop Whipple Building near Fort Snelling on a January afternoon. As it drove away, protesters quickly captured its Minnesota license plate to share with others tracking immigration agents.

But the plates didn’t belong to the Cherokee. They were last registered in 2014 to a Porsche 911 Turbo.

It wasn’t the only suspicious plate activity involving federal vehicles. There was a Chevy Tahoe with no plates. A Jeep was registered to a Ferrari with 2019 tabs. One plate was seen on four different vehicles. An observer even photographed two cars with the same plates, one driving a few feet in front of the other.

A Minnesota Star Tribune review of more than 100 Minnesota license plates attached to immigration enforcement vehicles in recent weeks shows that nearly 60% were not registered with the state of Minnesota, including the Chevy Tahoe that federal agent Jonathan Ross traveled in the day he fatally shot Renee Good in south Minneapolis.

Another 11% of the plates reviewed by the Star Tribune had some kind of irregularity, including expired tabs from different vehicles or plates registered to a nonexistent business. A quarter of the vehicles were rentals.

The Star Tribune used the state’s Driver and Vehicle Services database to review license plates captured through its reporting, by scanning social media and reviewing images shared by protest groups.

The state has an undercover vehicle registration program for law enforcement activities, but state and federal officials would not answer whether or to what extent the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be using it. The state has threatened to remove those privileges for the federal government.

“They need to be held accountable for how they do their job and the quality of the work they do,” said Dan McGregor, who protests at the Whipple Building in the morning.

The Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) division of the state’s Department of Public Safety has fielded numerous reports of illegal license-plate swapping on federal vehicles. A spokesman said the agency has complained about it to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

When asked about the plates, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin declined to discuss its tactics. She would not confirm its vehicles to the Star Tribune, saying that would “put an even larger target on our officers’ backs.”

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs,” McLaughlin said in a written statement.

McLaughlin said there’s been an increasing number of officer vehicles being rammed and followed, along with assaults. A Minneapolis woman appeared in federal court this week on charges of driving her car into an immigration agent’s vehicle.

Wymore said he’s also disappointed that Hennepin County law enforcement appears to be allowing the activity, as they drive past officers there regularly, Wymore said.

“It is super dangerous, because anybody could do that if they’re allowing completely unmarked vehicles to leave that building,” Wymore said.

The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office has said its deputies are at Whipple to maintain order. The office did not respond to questions about license plates.

It’s illegal in Minnesota to use plates that aren’t registered to the vehicle using them, and that applies to unmarked law enforcement vehicles.

The December letter to Noem from DVS director Pong Xiong says such violations “will not be tolerated.”

A spokesman for the DVS said they can’t verify whether or how many specific DHS license plates are part of the undercover program.

State law also forbids the transfer of plates between vehicles. Xiong warned Noem that the department’s participation in the program would be jeopardized if it doesn’t follow the law, and that it can also revoke license plates and registrations for vehicles in violation.

Law enforcement needs to issue a citation that is followed by a court ruling before DVS could take action, the spokesman said.

The plate-switching has also been called out in Illinois, where Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said his office received hundreds of complaints about rental cars with swapped plates. A video of an immigration officer there telling an observer that he changed his plates daily was shared earlier this winter.

By law in Minnesota, license plates are the property of the vehicle, and not the car owner. People selling cars to scrap and salvage yards are supposed to remove or destroy plates for identity protection and to prevent tab theft. If they don’t, the salvage business is supposed to.