‘Racial Equity’ Group Funded by Minnesota Taxpayers Asks for Donations To Bail Fund Freeing Anti-ICE Agitators
A “racial equity” and “restorative justice” nonprofit funded by Minnesota taxpayers is calling for donations to a new bail fund that’s helping free anti-ICE agitators and illegal immigrants detained in Minneapolis.
The Legal Rights Center, which Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison led for five years, is promoting the People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota through Know Your Rights MN, a Legal Rights Center project that provides legal information and resources for activists. The project’s website was updated Thursday to include a link to the bail fund, which only secured nonprofit status last week and is actively “accepting requests for ICE protest cases,” according to its Instagram account.
The Legal Rights Center received nearly $5.7 million—roughly two-thirds of its total revenue—in grants from the government between 2021 and 2024, according to the Minnesota attorney general’s office. It doesn’t indicate whether that’s from federal, state, or local sources, but the nonprofit’s website lists the state among its financial backers. At least $400,000 of that funding came in the form of sub-grants from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. In 2024, for example, the department awarded the Legal Rights Center a $45,000 award for work aimed at “ending racial disparities and improving outcomes in the juvenile justice system.” A state agency also promotes the organization.
The Legal Rights Center’s move to solicit donations for the People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota came amid escalating protests and riots across Minneapolis in response to a surge of ICE agents in the Twin Cities. The evening before Know Your Rights MN’s website was updated, Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) urged residents to resist ICE, accusing the agency of waging a “campaign of organized brutality.” In recent weeks, roughly three dozen agitators have been arrested, with charges ranging from assaulting law enforcement to refusing lawful orders to disperse. DHS has taken more than 3,000 criminal illegal aliens—including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles—into custody, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday.
Radical groups organizing the anti-ICE protests have received millions of dollars from the Left’s premier foundations and dark money networks, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The Legal Rights Center itself received nearly $460,000 from the New Venture Fund, a behemoth left-wing dark money charity, between 2021 and 2024.
Other funding to the nonprofit includes $30,000 from the Pohlad Family Foundation in 2020 to protect “community during protests,” another $30,000 from the Minneapolis Foundation in 2024 to “foster resilience,” and $4,000 the same year from the Hennepin County Bar Association.
The Legal Rights Center also partners with the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, whose parent organization is a radical left-wing group that defended Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel. During the wave of pro-Hamas demonstrations following the terrorist attack, the group was explicit about its role, stating that its jail support hotline connects arrestees with “bail payment coordination.”
Know Your Rights MN’s website, which was overhauled Thursday in partnership with the anti-ICE “abolitionist design & production studio” Blackbird Revolt, provides guidance on protest activity, interactions with law enforcement, and propaganda pushing for an end to cash bail. It offers “legal empowerment workshops” for audiences as young as elementary school students, as well.
The People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota isn’t the only organization that frees detained immigrants and other arrestees Know Your Rights MN began promoting after updating its website. It also touts the Black Immigrants Bail Fund, the LGBTQ Freedom Fund—which has never freed a Minnesotan, according to its website—and the Repro Legal Defense Fund, which “covers bail and funds strong defenses for people who are investigated, arrested, or prosecuted for self-managed abortion.”
The People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota, meanwhile, is “dedicated to supporting communities affected by injustice and criminalization,” according to its website. The group has been posting bail for Hennepin County misdemeanor cases since it launched in July. It began operations just two months after the new executive director for the Minnesota Freedom Fund—the bail fund promoted by former vice president Kamala Harris amid the 2020 George Floyd riots that freed violent criminals—announced that his group would shift away from “transactional bail and immigration bond payments” toward broader “community power-building” efforts.
The Legal Rights Center, People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota, and Walz did not respond to requests for comment.
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