30 more people charged in connection with Minnesota church incident: DOJ
Thirty more people have been charged in connection with an incident last month in which anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service at a Minnesota church, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.
"At my direction, federal agents have already arrested 25 of them, with more to come throughout the day," Bondi said in a post on X after a superseding indictment in the case was unsealed. "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."
The Justice Department had previously charged nine others, including former CNN journalist Don Lemon, for their alleged roles in the incident. Lemon and several others pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges earlier this month.
The incident unfolded on Jan. 18, when protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul. The protesters said one of the pastors is the acting director of the St. Paul ICE field office. Protesters were heard chanting "Justice for Renee Good" inside the church, referencing the woman fatally shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis in early January.
The two-count indictment charges all the defendants with conspiracy against rights of religious freedom and an attempt to injure while exercising religious freedom.
The DOJ alleges that the people met for a "pre-operational briefing" in a shopping center and then entered the church in two waves -- the first "positioning themselves among the congregants" and the second "commencing the disruptive takeover operation, in which the first wave of agitators then actively joined," the superseding indictment states.
The indictment further alleges that the defendants "oppressed, threatened, and intimidated the Church's congregants and pastors" by occupying space in the main aisle and rows of chairs near the front of the church and engaged in "menacing and threatening behavior."
Lemon has called the charges "baseless" and said he was arrested for "something that I've been doing for the last 30 years, and that is covering the news."
Activist and attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, who was identified in the indictment as one of the organizers of the anti-ICE demonstration and has pleaded not guilty to the charges, told ABC News following her arrest last month that the case was "more of the Trump administration's focus on punishing non-violent, peaceful demonstrators, attacking the free press, so that he can silence dissent."
