Minneapolis Mayor Calls for Release of Activists Who Stormed Church Service

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey is calling for the release of anti-ICE protesters who stormed a St. Paul, Minn., church on Sunday. He previously refused to condemn the activists for barging into the church and terrorizing congregants.

Frey on Thursday responded to the arrest of Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul school board member Chauntyll Allen, and other organizers of a protest at St. Paul’s Cities Church.

“This is a gross abuse of power,” said Frey, whom federal prosecutors recently subpoenaed as part of an investigation into whether Minnesota officials have conspired to thwart federal immigration enforcement. “The federal government is picking and choosing who to investigate—going after protestors and not the person who shot and killed one of our neighbors,” he added, referring to Renee Good, a 37-year-old activist who was fatally shot by an ICE agent after striking him with her vehicle during an anti-ICE protest.

Frey’s response comes after the mayor and other Democrats refused to express outrage over the anti-church event, in which Armstrong’s group stormed into Cities Church during a sermon from lead pastor Jonathan Parnell. The protesters shouted “ICE Out” and other slogans. One participant is seen on video berating parishioners, invoking their Christian faith, and noting that the church is majority white.

Frey’s only comment on the matter was saying that he personally would have taken a different approach, while stopping short of condemning the activists for their actions. “I don’t know as much about it simply because it didn’t happen in Minneapolis. Granted, being in a church is a place that is sacred. Here’s what I would say: that certainly is not the route that I would’ve taken individually to protest in a church. I don’t know enough of the circumstances behind it again, so I don’t want to comment on something that I’m not aware of,” he told a local outlet.

Armstrong and Allen were indicted Thursday for violating the FACE Act, which makes it a crime to threaten or intimidate people at houses of worship or patients at abortion clinics.

Federal prosecutors also sought charges against former CNN host Don Lemon, who broadcast the event at the invitation of Armstrong. According to reports, a federal magistrate judge refused to sign a complaint charging Lemon.

The magistrate judge who spared Lemon is Douglas Micko, whose wife Caitlin works in Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison’s office, Fox News reported. Ellison appeared on Lemon’s show earlier this week and voiced support for Lemon and the other church intruders.

The protest, which organizers dubbed “Operation Pull Up,” went viral thanks in large part to Lemon’s broadcast of the event on his YouTube channel, which boasts 1 million subscribers. Lemon’s footage began Sunday morning as Armstrong and others gathered in a retail parking lot to hammer out a strategy for the protest.

“We just got into Minneapolis a little bit ago and did some reconnaissance on the ground, speaking to an organization there that’s gearing up for resistance and protest,” said Lemon, who then interviewed Armstrong, kissing her on the cheek and thanking her for inviting him to the protest.

“We show up somewhere that is a key location,” Armstrong told Lemon. “They don’t expect us to come there. And then we disrupt business as usual.”

Lemon took steps to keep the “clandestine” operation a secret, even turning off his video camera to avoid airing the location they planned to target.

“These are resistance protesters that are planning an operation that we’re going to follow them on,” Lemon said. “I can’t tell you exactly what they’re doing.” Lemon described it as an operation “where they surprise people, catch them off guard, and hold them to account.”

Lemon’s cameras were rolling once Armstrong and company entered the church, where Parnell, the senior pastor, was administering a sermon.

While Lemon insisted on his live feed that he was there as a “journalist” and not an activist, he praised the protesters throughout the demonstration.

“That’s what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something,” he said. “You have to make people uncomfortable in these times. You have to be willing to go into places and disrupt and make people uncomfortable.”

And his live feed could prove useful to a prosecution under the FACE Act.

“I’m looking at a young man in the corner. He’s frightened. He’s crying. He’s scared,” Lemon narrated from inside the church.

Lemon, who asked viewers from inside the church to “like” and “subscribe” to his YouTube channel, has defended his actions this week, saying he was present at the church as a journalist and not an activist. He said his actions and those of Armstrong and others are protected under the First Amendment.

Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, agreed with Lemon on that measure earlier this week, while mocking supporters of the church.

“They’re getting tender about a church service now,” Ellison told Lemon in an interview on Monday.

​​”I think that protest is fundamental to American society. You know, it’s freedom of expression. People have a right to lift up their voices and make their peace. And none of us are immune from the voice of the public.”

Ellison said he doubted whether the FACE Act should be used to investigate the protest, saying that the statute, enacted in 1994, was “designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights to be protected and so that people for a religious reason cannot just use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers.”

But Ellison’s own record contradicts that claim. As attorney general, he submitted a brief in a 2020 federal lawsuit that accused a Minneapolis woman of violating the First Amendment rights of parishioners at Dar Al-Farooq, a mosque outside Minneapolis, by filming them without their permission.

In 2015, as a House member, Ellison urged former president Barack Obama’s civil rights chief Vanita Gupta to investigate whether a group of protesters in Phoenix violated the FACE Act by holding firearms during protests outside a Phoenix mosque.

“These demonstrators argue that they are exercising their First Amendment rights. What they fail to understand is that First Amendment rights are not absolute; they are limited to protect the safety and rights of others,” wrote Ellison.