A group of protesters interrupted Sunday morning services at a St. Paul church because one of the pastors works with a federal immigration agency, according to police.
At approximately 10:40 a.m., officers were called to the Cities Church in the 1500 block of Summit Avenue after receiving reports that some 30 to 40 protesters had interrupted services, according to police spokesperson Nikki Muehlhausen.
By the time officers arrived, the group had left and was walking down the alley, she said.
In a Facebook post, protesters said they went to the church to ask for justice for Renee Good because they had identified a church pastor as the acting director for the St. Paul field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The church’s website lists David Easterwood as a pastor. Easterwood is listed as a defendant in a Jan. 12 lawsuit filed by the state of Minnesota to halt the federal immigration crackdown that led to the fatal Jan. 7 confrontation between Good and an ICE agent. He also defended ICE tactics in an earlier filing on Jan. 5.
DOJ investigation
Later Sunday, Trump administration officials condemned the protest at the St. Paul church, which is is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative Protestant denomination headquartered in Nashville, Tenn.
The U.S. Department of Justice said it is investigating. Department of Justice 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.”
“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!” she said on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also weighed in on social media, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“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,” said Armstrong, who added she is an ordained reverend. “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.”
Cities Church did not respond to a phone call or emailed request for comment Sunday evening, and Easterwood’s personal contact information could not immediately be located.
Easterwood did not lead the part of the service that was livestreamed, and it was unclear if he was present at the church Sunday.
Easterwood’s earlier statements
In a Jan. 5 court filing, Easterwood defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota such as swapping license plates and spraying protesters with chemical irritants. He wrote that federal agents were experiencing increased threats and aggression and crowd control devices like flash-bang grenades were important to protect against violent attacks. He testified 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.”
“Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency stated. “They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”
Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty said that the DOJ’s prosecution was misguided.
“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?” Cullars-Doty said. “We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray.”
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