On Sunday (January 18), anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where David Easterwood, a pastor, is also the acting field director of the local ICE office. The protest, organized by Black Lives Matter Minnesota, aimed to highlight Easterwood’s dual role as a pastor and ICE official. The protesters chanted “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” a woman killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Easterwood was not leading the service during the protest, and it remains unclear if he was present.
The Justice Department is investigating the incident for potential civil rights violations, describing the protest as “desecrating a house of worship.” Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to use “the full force of federal law” against the demonstrators while President Donald Trump labeled them as “agitators and insurrectionists.”
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a protestor and leader of the Racial Justice Network, criticized the federal response, stating, “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.”
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