Federal agents have arrested 25 people and are hunting the rest after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced 30 new charges tied to the disruption of a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, last month.
Bondi made the announcement on Friday on X, framing the prosecution as a clear warning to anyone who targets houses of worship.
YOU CANNOT ATTACK A HOUSE OF WORSHIP. If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you,
Bondi wrote, adding that the arrests were carried out at her direction and that more would follow throughout the day.
The charges stem from a Jan. 18 incident at Cities Church in St. Paul, where protesters allegedly disrupted a worship service during an anti-ICE demonstration. The indictment alleges that the individuals entered the church in a "coordinated takeover-style attack," intimidating and obstructing worshippers. Court papers state that "Young children were left to wonder, as one child put it, if their parents were going to die."
At least nine other people had already been arrested in connection with the same incident, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Lemon has maintained he cannot be held criminally liable, claiming he was merely reporting on the demonstration. The new charges bring the total number of people federally charged to at least 39.
According to the New York Post, the protesters disrupted the service after discovering that one of the church's pastors shares a name with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. Whether the St. Paul ICE director and the pastor are in fact the same person has not been publicly verified. The New York Post has stated it was unable to confirm the connection.
That unverified overlap was apparently enough to draw a crowd into a place of worship on a Sunday morning. Whatever grievance the demonstrators believed they had, the federal government has now made clear it considers what happened inside Cities Church a crime, not a protest.
Cities Church lawyer Doug Wardlow praised the new round of arrests and took direct aim at anyone invoking free speech as a defense.
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.
Wardlow's statement is notable for what it implies about the defenses likely to come. Don Lemon's claim that he was "merely reporting" already previews a First Amendment argument. Whether the courts find that defense credible for someone arrested inside a disrupted church service will be a closely watched question as these cases proceed.
The Jan. 18 disruption at Cities Church did not occur in a vacuum. Tensions had been running high across Minnesota due to the presence of thousands of immigration officers deployed as part of Operation Metro Surge. On Jan. 7, Renee Good was fatally shot in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Approximately a week after the church incident, Alex Pretti was killed by a federal officer, also in Minneapolis.
None of that context, however heated, changes the legal calculus for what allegedly happened inside Cities Church. Disrupting a worship service, allegedly intimidating families and children, and allegedly executing what the indictment describes as a coordinated incursion into a house of worship is conduct the Justice Department has chosen to prosecute aggressively.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed what specific federal charges the 30 newly charged individuals face. The indictment has been referenced in court papers, but the exact counts, the court handling the case, and the identities of the defendants beyond Lemon have not been disclosed publicly. Investigators and prosecutors will need to establish whether each defendant played a distinct role in what the indictment calls a coordinated action.
The procedural road ahead will likely include initial appearances, arraignments, and potential bail hearings for each of the newly arrested individuals. Whether additional charges follow for others allegedly involved remains an open question, given Bondi's explicit warning that more arrests were expected throughout the day.
Thirty new charges. Twenty-five people already in custody. And a sitting Attorney General publicly promising she is not finished. For anyone who thought invading a church full of families on a Sunday morning would be treated as just another protest, the Department of Justice has provided a blunt correction.
