The U.S. Department of Justice announced Sunday that it is probing a group of demonstrators in Minnesota who interrupted worship at a church where a local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official reportedly serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video shared on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, an organizer of the protest, depicts several individuals disrupting services at St. Paul’s Cities Church by shouting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The was killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month during an increase in federal immigration enforcement operations.
Protesters claim that David Easterwood, one of the church’s pastors, also heads the local ICE field office supervising operations that have involved and .
U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon stated her agency is examining potential federal civil rights violations “by these individuals desecrating a place of worship and disrupting Christian worshippers.”
“A house of worship is not a public forum for protests! It is a space safeguarded from precisely such actions by federal criminal and civil statutes!” she posted on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also commented on social media, stating that any breaches of federal law would be subject to prosecution.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who took part in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights group Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ probe as a fraudulent diversion from the actions of federal agents in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“When you consider the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents on our community and all the damage they’ve inflicted, having someone serve as a pastor who supervises these ICE agents is almost incomprehensible to me,” said Armstrong, who noted she is an ordained reverend. “If people are more worried about someone entering a church on Sunday and disrupting routine operations than they are about the atrocities our community is experiencing, then they need to examine their theology and their hearts.”
The website of St. Paul-based Cities Church identifies David Easterwood as a pastor, and his personal details appear to correspond with those of the David Easterwood named in court documents as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office. Easterwood was seen with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a last October.
Cities Church did not answer a phone call or email request for comment Sunday evening, and Easterwood’s personal contact information could not be immediately found.
Easterwood did not conduct the portion of the service that was livestreamed, and it remained unclear whether he was at the church Sunday.
In a Jan. 5 court filing, Easterwood defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota such as switching license plates and . He wrote that federal agents were facing heightened threats and hostility, and that crowd control equipment like flash-bang grenades were crucial for protection against violent assaults. He testified that he was not aware of agents “deliberately 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 as well,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency stated. “They’re moving from hotel to hotel, church to church, searching for federal law enforcement officers who risk their lives to protect Americans.”
Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty said the DOJ’s prosecution was misdirected.
“If you have a head — a church leader — who is directing and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to?” Cullars-Doty said. “We cannot sit back passively and watch people be misled.”