DOJ charges 30 more people in Minnesota church protest: Bondi

Attorney General Pam Bondi said 30 more people have been charged in connection with an anti-ICE protest in Minnesota that interrupted a church service.

Bondi added that 25 of the 30 indicted people have already been arrested. On Jan. 18, protesters interrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., because the demonstrators believed one of the pastors at the church also served as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer.

“YOU CANNOT ATTACK A HOUSE OF WORSHIP,” Bondi wrote Friday afternoon in a post on social platform X. “If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you.”

“This Department of Justice STANDS for Christians and all Americans of faith,” she wrote. 

The indictment names former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who was arrested for being at the church protest and already faces federal civil rights charges, which place protections on people in places of worship. He pleaded not guilty to these charges on Feb. 13, having argued that he was at the protest in his capacity as a journalist. 

Thirty-nine people who were at the protest are being charged on two counts, including “Conspiracy Against Right of Religious Freedom at Place of Worship” and “Injure, Intimidate, and Interfere with Exercise of Right of Religious Freedom at Place of Worship,” according to the superseding indictment. 

The indictment called the demonstrators’ actions at the church “a coordinated takeover-style attack” and stated the protesters engaged in “oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction alleged herein.”

“As a result of defendants’ conduct, the pastor and congregation were forced to terminate the Church’s worship service, congregants fled the Church building out of fear for their safety, other congregants took steps to implement an emergency plan, and young children were left to wonder, as one child put it, if their parents were going to die,” the indictment reads.

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