Cities Church in St. Paul became the focal point of a dispute over federal immigration enforcement after protesters disrupted services there, and the U.S. Department of Justice said it is now investigating the incident.
The DOJ said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at the church, according to the Associated Press report published Jan. 19. A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota showed people interrupting the service at Cities Church by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
The report tied the chants to the case of Renee Good, described as a 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activity. The protesters also alleged that a church pastor, David Easterwood, is connected to ICE operations.
In a social media post, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her agency is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.” Dhillon also posted that “A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!”
Attorney General Pam Bondi weighed in on social media as well, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted. The DOJ’s statement and the attorneys general’s remarks were made in the context of the disruption at the St. Paul church.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the prospect of a DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Armstrong said, “When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” adding she is an ordained reverend.
Armstrong also said: “If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and the need to check their hearts.” She portrayed the dispute as one about relative attention to federal enforcement and its effects.
Another critic of the DOJ approach, Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty, said the DOJ’s prosecution was misguided. Cullars-Doty said that “If you got a head — a leader in a church — that is leading and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to?” and then added, “We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray.”
The Associated Press report said the Cities Church website lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and that his personal information appears to match information identified in court filings as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office. It also said Easterwood appeared alongside Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Minneapolis press conference last October.
The church did not respond to a phone call or an emailed request for comment Sunday evening, the report said. It also said Easterwood’s personal contact information could not immediately be located, that Easterwood did not lead the part of the service that was livestreamed, and that it was unclear whether he was present at the church Sunday.
The report pointed to a Jan. 5 court filing in which Easterwood defended ICE tactics in Minnesota, including swapping license plates and spraying protesters with chemical irritants. In that filing, the report said Easterwood wrote that federal agents were experiencing increased threats and aggression and that crowd control devices like flash-bang grenades were important to protect against violent attacks.
The report also said Easterwood testified in the same Jan. 5 filing that he was unaware of agents “knowingly targeting or retaliating against peaceful protesters or legal observers with less lethal munitions and/or crowd control devices.” Separately, ICE issued a statement accusing protesters of targeting law enforcement and churches, saying, “Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too… They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”