A Top Union Official Backing Nebraska’s Senate Candidate Bragged About Doxxing an ICE Agent. It’s on Video.
An undercover video published by Townhall Media on July 23, 2026, shows Ruark Hotopp, National Vice President of AFGE District 8 and a Department of Homeland Security employee since 2013, describing how he obtained personal information on the ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis — and passed it to a campaign staffer for Dan Osborn, the Independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Nebraska.
Hotopp is not campaign staff. He is a union surrogate who spoke at Osborn’s campaign launch in July 2025 wearing an “Osborn For Senate” T-shirt, and whose union, AFGE, formally endorsed Osborn in December 2025. On tape, he names Dan McCollister, Osborn’s communications director, as the person who asked him for the agent’s information.
McCollister denies it. No prosecutor has confirmed opening a case. Osborn faces Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) in November after losing a 2024 Senate race to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE).
- Jan. 7, 2026 — date ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis — the shooting Hotopp references on tape
- 18 U.S.C. § 119 — the federal statute barring disclosure of a federal officer's personal information with intent to threaten or intimidate, cited by RedState as the applicable law — though no prosecutor has confirmed opening a case
- ~4,500 — DHS, ICE, and CBP personnel whose personal data was exposed in a separate, earlier 2026 "ICE List" leak — cited here as pattern context, not the same incident
- Dec. 2025 — when AFGE formally endorsed Osborn's independent Senate bid, five months after Hotopp appeared at his campaign launch
The video, shot undercover and published by Townhall reporter Kyle Olson on July 23, 2026, catches Hotopp mid-conversation, seemingly unaware he was being recorded. “I don’t have any bulls**t ICE agents that have been doxxed; I only have the one,” he says, before identifying that one agent as a former union duespayer he represented for years — someone who, in his telling, “used to threaten to turn us all in for public corruption and then we got him on video shooting someone in the face.”
That description matches Jonathan Ross, the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agent who fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis. Ross’s identity as the shooter was already public by Jan. 8, 2026, reported by the Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio — a separate fact from what Hotopp describes next.
BOMBSHELL UNDERCOVER VIDEO: A Dan Osborn ally and top federal union official appears to BRAG about helping doxx an ICE agent...
“So I was telling McCollister about it; he's like, 'Do you got that guy's information?' I said, 'I absolutely do.' He's like, 'Alright, I'll take it from here, chief.'”
Ruark Hotopp, on undercover video published by Townhall Media, July 23, 2026
My latest for Townhall: a top AFGE union official who's stumping for Dan Osborn's Senate campaign says on camera that he handed an ICE agent's personal information to Osborn's communications director.
Hotopp is National Vice President of AFGE District 8, the American Federation of Government Employees local covering Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota — the same union that represents ICE agents like Ross. He has worked at the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services since 2013, which is how he came to represent Ross as a duespayer in the first place.
Hotopp holds no official title on Osborn’s campaign. But his public association with it is not in dispute: he spoke at Osborn’s campaign launch on July 26, 2025, wearing an “Osborn For Senate” T-shirt, photos of which ran in the Omaha World-Herald’s coverage of the event. Five months later, in December 2025, AFGE formally endorsed Osborn’s independent bid for the seat.
A union official who works with DHS and sits in the same union as ICE agents bragging about doxxing one — while campaigning for the guy running against Pete Ricketts. Read that twice.
Osborn, a Navy veteran and former steamfitters’ union president, is running as an Independent — not a Democrat — a distinction his campaign has emphasized since his 2024 run against Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), which he lost. He qualified for November’s ballot on July 16, 2026, according to the Nebraska Examiner, and now faces Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE).
RedState’s Ward Clark points to 18 U.S.C. § 119, the federal statute that makes it a crime to publicly disclose a federal officer’s or employee’s personal information with intent to threaten or intimidate, as the law that would apply if the conduct on tape is what it appears to be. That statute has real teeth elsewhere: federal prosecutors have brought doxxing charges against people who exposed and targeted ICE personnel in unrelated cases.
But that is a separate case, brought by the Department of Justice against a different defendant. As of this writing, no prosecutor, DOJ component, or the DHS Office of Inspector General has confirmed opening any investigation into Hotopp or McCollister over this specific incident. This is, so far, a political and media story — not a criminal one. Whether it becomes one is not something this newsroom can predict, and we are not asserting a crime occurred.
The candidate — Dan Osborn, running as an Independent, previously lost a 2024 Senate race to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) and now faces Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) in November 2026.
The union ally — Ruark Hotopp, AFGE District 8 National Vice President and a DHS/USCIS employee since 2013, spoke at Osborn’s campaign launch and is a surrogate, not staff.
The campaign staffer named on tape — Dan McCollister, Osborn’s communications director, who denies any involvement.
Nothing in this piece alleges Osborn personally directed or knew about the alleged exchange. The tape implicates Hotopp and, according to Hotopp’s own account, McCollister — not the candidate himself.
McCollister denied any role when Townhall put the allegation to him directly. “I had no involvement with the release of any personal information about any ICE agent,” he told the outlet. “I was not in contact with any press about this issue.”
That denial addresses contact with the press, specifically — it does not directly address whether he asked Hotopp for the agent’s information in the first place, which is the exchange Hotopp describes on tape. The Osborn campaign has not, as of this writing, issued a separate statement distancing itself from Hotopp or clarifying his ongoing role, if any, as a campaign surrogate.
The video circulated quickly online, drawing reaction from commentators who argued that regardless of who directed what, a person with a union role at DHS handing out a federal agent’s personal information — to anyone, for any reason — crosses a line that should carry consequences.
Anyone for any reason that endangers any ICE agent should be arrested and prosecuted.
Wow. I suspect he's going to get taken out to the woodshed.
The Hotopp tape does not exist in isolation. Earlier in 2026, a separate leak — unconnected to this incident — exposed personal data belonging to roughly 4,500 DHS, ICE, and CBP personnel nationwide on a website that came to be known as the “ICE List.” DHS responded publicly, condemning the doxxing and escalating threats against its officers as a pattern, not an isolated event.
ICE’s own leadership has since defended agents’ use of masks in the field as a direct response to that climate, arguing that officers and their families have been targeted for exposure and threats. Congress has responded with its own legislative push: S.1952, the “Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act,” remains pending in the 119th Congress.
None of that broader pattern proves what happened in the Hotopp exchange specifically — it is background, not evidence. What is documented: a union official who is a public surrogate for a Senate candidate, on tape, describing how he obtained a federal agent’s personal information and passed it to that candidate’s communications director, who denies the exchange as described.
An undercover video shows Ruark Hotopp, a top AFGE union official and public surrogate for Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn, describing how he obtained personal information on the ICE agent who shot Renee Good and passed it to Osborn’s communications director, Dan McCollister — who denies it. No prosecutor has confirmed opening a case, and Osborn himself is not shown directing anything. But the tape lands amid a documented, escalating pattern of doxxing aimed at federal immigration officers, and it raises a question Osborn’s campaign has not yet answered on the record: what, if anything, it plans to do about a prominent ally caught on camera bragging about exactly that.
