DOJ charges 30 more people in Minnesota anti-ICE church protest
The US Department of Justice announced Friday that 30 more people are being charged for their roles in an anti-ICE protest staged last month at a church in Minnesota.
Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media that 25 of the 30 defendants named in a newly unsealed indictment had been arrested by federal agents, with “more to come”.
The protest is the same one that led to the arrest of former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who along with nine others was charged after entering the Cities Church in St Paul with protesters who claimed a pastor was an immigration-enforcement official.
Lemon and the others initially arrested have pleaded not guilty to civil rights violations.
“YOU CANNOT ATTACK A HOUSE OF WORSHIP. If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you,” Bondi wrote on social media Friday. “This Department of Justice STANDS for Christians and all Americans of faith.”
All 39 people arrested are charged with conspiracy against religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship.
“A group of approximately 40 agitators, including all of the defendants named in this Indictment, entered the Church in a coordinated takeover-style attack and engaged in acts of oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction alleged herein,” the indictment says.
In the 18 January incident, protesters interrupted a service in the church by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good”, the mother of three who was fatally shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer last month in Minneapolis.
Footage showed a chaotic scene unfolding inside the church, which belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention, as protesters and members of the congregation shout at each other.
Lemon was live-streaming the incident when it happened, and he has defended his decision to enter the church, saying he was simply carrying out his duty as an independent journalist covering a protest.
“I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now,” he said soon after he was arrested.
But the indictment alleges that Lemon and the other co-defendants “entered the Church in a coordinated takeover-style attack and engaged in acts of oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction”.
Doug Wardlow, the lawyer representing Cities Church, celebrated the news of additional arrests, saying it “sends a clear message: houses of worship are off limits for those who would use chaos and intimidation to advance a political agenda”.
In the statement posted to social media, Wardlow said the protest “placed congregants, including children, in fear for their lives”.
Three weeks after Good’s death and a week after the church protest, federal agents fatally shot a second person, intensive care nurse Alex Pretti.
Both Pretti and Good were killed as they were protesting against the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement efforts in Minnesota, an operation that has since ended.
By BBC News