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By Aliss Higham
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MAGA supporters have condemned protesters in Minnesota who disrupted church services at a congregation where a pastor is said to also work as a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Why It Matters
Since December, Minnesota has been at the center of the federal government’s aggressive immigration efforts. The Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge has resulted in hundreds of arrests, sparking widespread backlash.
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Tensions escalated earlier this month after two separate shootings involving ICE agents—one that killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, and another that left Venezuelan migrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis injured during an attempted detention. The church protest is the latest in a string that have taken place in Minnesota in recent weeks.
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The Protest
Protesters disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday. They claimed one of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, also heads the local ICE field office responsible for operations, which have ramped up in Minnesota over the past month. Demonstrators chanted “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
The Cities Church website lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and his personal details appear to match those of the David Easterwood named in court documents as acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office, according to a report by The Associated Press. It is not clear if he was at the interrupted service on Sunday.
Newsweek has contacted the church via the contact form on its website for comment.
Lead Pastor Jonathan Parnell told independent reporter Don Lemon at the scene that the protest was "unacceptable" and "shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship."
MAGA Reaction
"This desecration of Christian worship has no place in America," right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson said on X, describing the protest as "sickening."
Several have also called for the protesters to be charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which establishes federal protections for reproductive health clinics and houses of worship, criminalizing the use of force, obstruction, or intimidation against people working in or accessing those spaces.
"MAKE THE ARRESTS, DOJ! Lock up the church-storming agitators. Protect houses of worship!" MAGA commentator David Freeman posted.
Lemon has also been criticized for attending the event, with conservative social media personality George Behizy posting: "If Pam Bondi doesn't throw Don Lemon in jail for what he did today, then she needs to be fired."
Lemon told Newsweek he stands by his reporting and that it is "notable that I’ve been cast as the face of a protest I was covering as a journalist—especially since I wasn’t the only reporter there. That framing is telling.
"What’s even more telling is the barrage of violent threats, along with homophobic and racist slurs, directed at me online by MAGA supporters and amplified by parts of the right-wing press."
Lemon said that if "this much time and energy is going to be spent manufacturing outrage" that it would be better spent investigating the death of Good, "the very issue that brought people into the streets in the first place."
The protest has been met with an investigation by the Department of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that "attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law."
"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," she posted on Sunday.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her office is looking into potential federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
She added: “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!”
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who took part in the protest and leads the local civil rights group Racial Justice Network (RJN), dismissed the possible DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from the actions of federal agents in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Newsweek has contacted the RJN via the contact form on its website for comment.
Armstrong said: “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.”
“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 they need to check their hearts.”
Update 1/20/2026 3:30 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Don Lemon.
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