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By Shane Croucher
Senior Editor
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The Department of Justice is investigating an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service in Minneapolis-St. Paul amid claims that a pastor there works as a federal immigration officer.
Minnesota has been a center of rolling protests against the Trump administration's surge of federal immigration enforcement activity in the state in an intensifying clash over the issue, which has in some instances turned violent with fatal consequences.
The protesters allege that one of the church's pastors also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that they say have involved violent tactics and illegal arrests. But the Trump administration says local left-wing activists, egged on by Democratic lawmakers, have violently attacked ICE agents for doing their lawful job of tackling illegal immigration.
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A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting "ICE out" and "Justice for Renee Good," the name of the woman fatally shot by an ICE agent in her car as she drove in his direction in Minneapolis.
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Harmeet Dhillon, U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, said she is "in touch with" U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI about the church protest on Sunday.
"We are all over it. We are investigating potential criminal violations of federal law," Dhillion said in a post on X.
She added in a follow-up post: "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!"
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Bondi said she had spoken to the pastor of the church.
"Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law," Bondi said in a post on X. "If state leaders refuse to act responsibly to prevent lawlessness, this Department of Justice will remain mobilized to prosecute federal crimes and ensure that the rule of law prevails."
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a distraction from federal agents' actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
"When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me," said Armstrong, who added she is an ordained reverend.
"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."
This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.
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