The incident, which shut down Cities Church’s Sunday sermon, comes as agitators across the Twin Cities accost anyone they believe to be immigration agents, associates, or simply supporters of ICE in response to the ICE-involved shooting of Renee Good.

Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the organizers, livestreamed the activist takeover of Cities Church, captioning the 40-minute footage, “Up with Christ and down with ICE.”

BLM Minnesota’s viral video captured an angry mob barging in during the church service and demanding to know the whereabouts of Pastor David Easterwood. A man with the same name serves as ICE’s acting director for the agency’s field office in St. Paul.

LIBERAL ACTIVISTS USE AGGRESSIVE ‘ICE WATCH’ TACTICS TO TARGET FEDERAL OFFICERS IN MINNEAPOLIS

Children were seen sobbing among the terrified parishioners, while protesters chanted, “ICE Out!” and “Justice for Renee Good!” The congregation eventually disbanded after the encroaching crowd successfully drove churchgoers out into the cold.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, announced on Sunday evening that the DOJ is probing possible violations of the FACE Act, a federal law protecting places of worship from protests intended to intimidate people of faith.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom Dhillon said is “personally looped [in],” confirmed the investigation, vowing, “Any violation of federal law will be prosecuted.”

“Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law,” Bondi said on X.

Organizers, however, are doubling down despite the DOJ’s threats. Nationally known BLM leader Nekima Levy Armstrong, head of the Minnesota-based Racial Justice Network, said their actions were justified.

“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,” Armstrong told reporters, adding that she is an ordained reverend.

In conversations with the press, Armstrong is crediting herself as the chief coordinator of the uprising at Cities Church.

Armstrong, an attorney and former law professor, said she discovered that a man named David Easterwood was named as a co-defendant in a federal lawsuit filed days ago by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Upon this discovery, Armstrong said she activated other organizations operating in the area, which then mobilized their forces.

“As soon as I realized the dual roles that he played, I reached out to other Black women organizers and asked them if they would help me pull an action together,” Armstrong, formerly the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Minneapolis arm, told the Minnesota Star Tribune.

A digital flyer promoting a vaguely described Sunday morning protest listed the Racial Justice Network, BLM Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities Metro as the hosts of “a special #ICEOut Action.” According to the poster, protest participants were instructed to gather for the event, titled #OperationPullUp, at “10 A.M. sharp” in a parking lot down the street from Cities Church. 

In a Facebook post following the protest, Armstrong tagged several community leaders, giving “special thanks” to Monique Cullars-Doty, the co-founder of BLM Minnesota; Chauntyll Allen, a member of the St. Paul Public School Board; and Satara Strong-Allen, the executive director of Love First Community Engagement, for “co-organizing this mission.”

“It’s time for judgment to begin and it will begin in the House of God!!! Thank you to all of the activists who showed up,” Armstrong said, additionally naming former CNN anchor Don Lemon.

Lemon, who filmed the protest as it unfolded for his YouTube channel, was reportedly looped in beforehand as an “independent journalist.”

While narrating the footage, Lemon appeared to side with the protesters, claiming that their conduct is a constitutionally protected activity.

“There is nothing in the Constitution that tells you what time you can protest,” Lemon said, voicing over the video. “You can protest at any time. That’s the whole point of it is to disrupt, is to make people uncomfortable. And that’s what they’re doing…You have to make people uncomfortable in these times.”

Dhillon later took aim at Lemon’s statements, suggesting that he was part of the protest.

“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she said on social media. “Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!”

In an interview with Newsmax on Monday, Dhillon discussed whether Lemon was an active participant in the protest. One of the hosts noted that Lemon frequently used “we” to refer to the protesters, not “them.”

DOJ PROBING ANTI-ICE PROTEST AT MINNEAPOLIS CHURCH SERVICE

Lemon started livestreaming the protest as anti-ICE activists initially assembled in a nearby parking lot. While outlining #OperationPullUp to viewers, Lemon said that Armstrong has been staging surprise operations, catching targets off guard and “hold[ing] them to account,” since George Floyd’s death in 2020.

“And so that’s what we’re doing here,” Lemon explained. “After we do this operation, you’ll see it live.”

On the subject of Lemon’s potential criminal liability, Dhillon told Newsmax, “Imagine you have a bank robbery that’s being planned by a number of criminals…And then a podcaster says, ‘Well, let me embed myself in here and come along for the ride and livestream the crime.’ That would not be protected by the First Amendment.”

Dhillon suggested that making on-the-ground commentary about how “putting people in fear is literally part of the protest, part of the plan,” indicates criminal complicity.

At another point in Lemon’s livestream, he filmed himself buying donuts and coffee at a Starbucks and then distributing them to protesters.

“Don Lemon is on the front lines right now!” one anti-ICE activist announced on a megaphone. “Don Lemon’s got coffee for y’all!”

“And donuts,” Lemon added.

As Lemon recounted, Armstrong gained national prominence organizing similar stunts during the George Floyd-era riots in Minneapolis. Notably, she convened a massive 2020 protest outside the house of Bob Kroll, then-president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, where activists bashed piñata effigies of the police union boss and his wife, WCCO reporter Liz Collin.

THE PRIME OF TOUGH-GUY PROGRESSIVISM

Nearly six years later, Armstrong said she sees the anti-ICE resistance as another fight that necessitates such aggressive street-level strategies.

“I normally don’t disrupt church services, but this was so extreme that we had to,” Armstrong said.

Despite the threat of federal charges, Cullars-Doty, of BLM Minnesota, similarly stood by the coalition that crashed the Sunday service at Cities Church.

“If you got a head — a leader in a church — that is leading and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to? We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray,” Cullars-Doty agreed.

The Washington Examiner contacted BLM Minnesota, RJN, and Armstrong for comment.