October 2, 2026
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced federal charges Friday against 30 more people who are accused of civil rights violations in a January takeover of a Minnesota church where a pastor works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Bondi said on social media that 25 people were in custody and more arrests would follow. The new indictment comes a month after independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong were charged for their alleged roles in a protest at Cities Church in St. Paul.
Bondi accused the group of attacking a house of worship.
"If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you,” she wrote on social media.
A livestreamed video posted on Facebook shows people interrupting services at Cities Church on Jan. 18.
Activists descended on Cities Church after learning that one of the church’s pastors also serves as an ICE official. The protest drew swift condemnation from Trump administration officials and conservative leaders for disrupting a Sunday service.
In total, 39 people now face charges of conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with the right of religious freedom. The new defendants had initial court appearances and were released.
Lemon and Fort said they were at the church as journalists covering news. The three have pleaded not guilty.
The indictment says the “agitators” entered the church in a “coordinated takeover-style attack” and engaged in acts of intimidation and obstruction.
“Young children were left to wonder, as one child put it, if their parents were going to die,” the indictment says.
A lawyer for the church praised the Justice Department for charging more people.
“The First Amendment does not give anyone — regardless of profession, prominence, or politics — license to storm a church and intimidate, threaten, and terrorize families and children worshipping inside,” Doug Wardlow said in a statement.
The revised indictment adds new allegations when compared to the original filed in January.
It says two people “conducted reconnaissance” outside the church a day before the protest and recorded their visit on video, with one saying, “My thoughts are to be able to close up this whole alleyway right here.”
The protest came at a tense time in Minnesota, where the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers for Operation Metro Surge after a series of public fraud cases where the majority of defendants had Somali roots. Officers frequently deployed tear gas for crowd control in neighborhood clashes with residents, often detaining them along with immigrants.
Renee Good, 37, was shot in Minneapolis. In another fatal shooting a week after the church protest, a federal officer killed Alex Pretti in the same city.
Separately, a woman who was at the church service has filed a lawsuit against some people who were charged, alleging emotional trauma and an inability to exercise her religion that day.
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