The Justice Department said on Thursday that it had arrested two of the demonstrators involved in interrupting a church service in St. Paul, Minn., to protest a pastor’s apparent work as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said on social media that agents with the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. had arrested two activists, Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, in connection with a protest on Sunday at Cities Church that brought service to a stop and prompted some congregants to leave.
The action was one of many furious demonstrations across the state after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good two weeks ago in Minneapolis amid a surge of federal agents to the state.
Several protest organizers called for the resignation of a pastor at the church, David Easterwood, believing he is also the acting director of ICE’s field office in St. Paul. An ICE official with that name is listed as a defendant in a lawsuit challenging the agency’s aggressive enforcement tactics. Videos of the protest showed dozens of demonstrators chanting “ICE out,” and “David Easterwood, out now,” as they marched through the building.
Ms. Levy Armstrong is a lawyer and a former president of the Minneapolis branch of the N.A.A.C.P. Ms. Allen is a member of the St. Paul School Board. It was not clear Thursday morning whether the women had been charged with any crimes and, if so, what they had been charged with. Efforts to reach the women for comment on Thursday morning were unsuccessful.
“Personally, I will not be gaslit by the Trump administration,” Ms. Levy Armstrong said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, before her arrest. “They are trying to turn a peaceful nonviolent demonstration into a crime.”
James Cook, a lawyer for some of the protesters, said on Thursday that the arrests surprised him.
“It’s one of those things where you think it sounds like a lot of bluster. But there it is. They’re actually getting rounded up,” he said.
The arrests came amid a large deployment of federal agents to the state, as the Trump administration works aggressively to curb protests against immigration enforcement in Minnesota. Since the killing of Ms. Good, 37, tensions in the Minneapolis area have run high, with an uptick in skirmishes between residents and heavily armed federal agents.
President Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he had seen footage of the protest at the church, calling it a raid by “agitators and insurrectionists.” “They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country,” he wrote.
At a news conference in central Minneapolis on Tuesday, Monique Cullars-Doty, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota and one of the organizers of the church demonstration, said that the surge in immigration agents had destabilized neighborhoods across the city and that it was wrong for a minister to be associated with those actions.
“It is an abomination for someone to put the title of reverend — which means reverence, reverence for God — before his name and act as a field director for ICE,” she added.
The escalation of aggressive immigration enforcement tactics has prompted outrage from many religious leaders across traditions, who have taken a range of steps to protest in states across the country, to varying degrees.
Roman Catholic bishops have rebuked the Trump administration’s campaign almost unanimously. But the issue has created more fault lines among Southern Baptists, the denomination of which Cities Church is a part, as a right-wing contingent has expressed support for the deportation effort.
Cities Church condemned the protest in a statement on Tuesday, saying that the demonstrators had “accosted members of our congregation, frightened children, and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat.”
The church added that it would “welcome respectful dialogue about present issues” and that the Bible can provide answers to “the world’s most complex” problems. It called on local, state and national leaders to protect church buildings as “places of peace and solace.”
The lead pastor, Jonathan Parnell, said in a phone interview that he would not confirm or deny that Mr. Easterwood worked for ICE, adding that it was not his practice to comment on the employment of people at the church. He did not directly address the protesters’ comments about Mr. Easterwood, an unpaid vocational pastor there, but expressed concern for the safety of the pastor and his family and said that the church supported him.
“He’s a holy and righteous man,” he said.
Mr. Parnell also said: “You can be a Christian and work in law enforcement. That’s not an incompatibility.”
Mr. Easterwood could not be reached for comment.
In her CNN interview on Wednesday, Ms. Levy Armstrong said that she and other activists had been welcomed into the church before they began protesting, and that the recent surge of immigration agents had been more disruptive than the demonstrators.
“If we want to talk about busting into somewhere, and descending upon a place, then we need to be talking about what ICE has done,” she said. “And they have been extremely brutal towards residents of the Twin Cities and across the state of Minnesota.”
Elizabeth Dias and John Yoon contributed reporting.
Jacey Fortin covers a wide range of subjects for The Times, including extreme weather, court cases and state politics across the country.
The post 2 Women Arrested Over Protest of Minnesota Pastor Linked to ICE appeared first on New York Times.
