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(THE DAILY SIGNAL) – A total of 39 people now face charges in the anti-ICE invasion of Cities Church in St. Paul last month, according to a superseding indictment that the federal district court unsealed Friday.
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“YOU CANNOT ATTACK A HOUSE OF WORSHIP,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X after the court unsealed the indictment. “If you do so, you cannot hide from us—we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you.”
Bondi announced that federal agents had already arrested 25 of the 30 new defendants included in the new indictment.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote, “I was up in the early hours of this morning to monitor the arrests in this case and keep [Pam Bondi] informed. Super proud of my colleagues in the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division and our local prosecutors in Minneapolis for this rapid and precise work!”
The indictment includes the nine people already arrested and charged, but adds another 30 individuals who allegedly deprived congregants of their rights.
Doug Wardlow, director of litigation for True North Legal, the firm representing Cities Church, welcomed the arrests.
“It shows just how serious the department is about protecting houses of worship,” Wardlow told The Daily Signal in a phone call Friday. “It underscores just how large and disruptive the invasion of Cities Church really was.”
His official statement, first provided to The Daily Signal, noted that the indictment “sends a clear message: houses of worship are off limits for those who would use chaos and intimidation to advance a political agenda.”
“The invasion of Cities Church was a planned, coordinated effort to disrupt a worship service and interfere with religious exercise that placed congregants, including children, in fear for their lives,” the attorney added.
“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.”
According to the superseding indictment, filed Thursday, agitators planned a “takeover style attack,” with some agitators posing as congregants sitting down in the sanctuary to worship and others planning to enter after the commotion began.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who has admitted her leadership role in the event, began the disruption. At her direction, “other co-conspirators immediately joined in by yelling and blowing whistles in a takeover attack on the church, all of which quickly caused the situation in the church to become chaotic, menacing, and traumatizing to church members.”
Former CNN host Don Lemon, who also faces charges in the attack, claims he was there as a journalist and not to take part in the disruption. Both Lemon and Armstrong have pleaded not guilty.
Agitators said they targeted the church because one of its pastors also works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Church Invasion
A federal grand jury previously indicted nine people, including Armstrong, on two charges: violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which also protects access to churches; and violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, which criminalizes efforts to deprive Americans of their fundamental rights—in this case, the right to the free exercise of religion.
According to the indictment, between 20 and 40 agitators, who claimed to be opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, refused to leave when asked and shouted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!”
The indictment also mentions that agitators screamed at crying children, blocked parents from getting to their children in Sunday School, and that one agitator told a child his parents were Nazis and going to hell.
The new indictment includes the original charges, but brings them against 30 more defendants.
It also adds some new information.
For instance, the indictment states that on Jan. 17, the night before the church invasion, Chauntyll Louisa Allen and Satara Diann Strong Allen “conducted reconnaissance around the Cities Church in preparation for the next day’s takeover operation at the church and made a video documenting their observations.”
According to the indictment, the two defendants noted “the location of parking areas, where they could ‘pull up,’ and [Allen noted] that ‘my thoughts are to be able to clog up this whole alleyway right here.” Obstructing access is a key aspect of a FACE Act violation.
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This article was originally published in The Daily Signal.
