In a year of political divisiveness, a Sunday protest at a Southern Baptist Church in St. Paul, Minn., has drawn a new line in the sand.
Protesters led by former CNN anchor Don Lemon entered Cities Church during Sunday morning worship Jan. 18 yelling, “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “ICE out.” They targeted the congregation because one of its pastors is reported to work also as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
The protest was organized by Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer who said she wanted to draw attention to David Easterwood, a pastor at the church who also apparently is acting director of the ICE field office for enforcement and removal operations in St. Paul. He is named in a lawsuit challenging aggressive enforcement tactics in the Twin Cities.
Left: Screencaps of David Easterwood as he preaches at Cities Church on April 6, 2025 (left) and speaks at a press conference in his role for ICE on Oct. 24, 2025 (right).
The church invasion came amid escalating tension in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where President Donald Trump has sent more than 2,000 federal troops to arrest several thousand alleged illegal immigrants using tactics that are among the most aggressive recorded nationally. An ICE agent shot citizen Renee Good in the face three times just days before, and other citizens are reported to have been severely injured by ICE just for publicly protesting.
Two days before the church protest, Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge told Wisconsin Public Radio: “It feels a bit like a pressure cooker over here.”
“It feels a bit like a pressure cooker over here.”
A resident who asked not to be named told WPR the psychological effects of the ICE invasion have been widespread, and some of the students at the elementary school where she teaches are afraid to come to class: “It is just the saddest thing to see tiny children who are just starting school have this kind of fear and uncertainty.”
On the other hand, opponents of the public demonstration inside a church also cited the trauma on children as a problem. CBN News led with a headline that said, “Children Terrified as Anti-ICE Mob Storms Minnesota Church to Target Pastor: ‘Despicable’”
For the Trump administration, this incident provided an opportunity to claim once again that ICE officers are being terrorized by liberal protesters, and not the other way around.
The Department of Homeland Security posted a video of the protest on X with this message: “Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too. They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”
Protesters converged on a few blocks in North Minneapolis after it was reported a federal agent shot a man Wednesday night, January 14, 2026. On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, Jonathan Ross, during a confrontation between federal agents and protesters in South Minneapolis. (Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Trump’s Department of Justice said it will investigate the protest for possible violations of federal law. Trump already has sent his DOJ after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024.
Trump and his allies have accused Gov. Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of “whipping these mobs into a frenzy and then allowing them to run rampant.”
Frey countered on 60 Minutes Sunday that ICE agents are “terrorizing people simply because they’re Latino or Somali.”
In a Facebook post, protesters said they hoped to “inform the congregation of … their pastor’s double-mindedness when it comes to the word of God and not loving thy neighbor with his work as a field director for ICE.”
Jonathan Parnell
Jonathan Parnell, lead pastor at the church, called the protesters “shameful.”
“We have asked them to leave, and they have obviously not left,” Parnell told Lemon on video. “This is unacceptable. This is shameful. It is shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.”
Parnell serves as a city missionary with the SBC North American Mission Board’s Send Network, NAMB’s church planting arm.
NAMB President Kevin Ezell said: “We will do whatever is necessary to protect those who serve faithfully and to uphold the right of churches to worship without fear or interference.”
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for Civil Rights at the DOJ, posted on X: “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! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!”
The events of Sunday morning played easily into evangelicals’ insistence that they are persecuted by American culture and government.
The president of National Religious Broadcasters, Troy Miller, reiterated that theme in comments about the incident, which he called a “premeditated attack” on a church.
“This outrageous assault on a house of God is a wake-up call for every American who values freedom,” he said. “Christians are under siege as the most persecuted religious group in our nation, facing escalating hostility from those who seek to silence our faith. These protesters didn’t just interrupt a service, they desecrated a sacred sanctuary, frightened families, harassed innocent believers and directly challenged our constitutional right to worship without fear or coercion. Targeting a church over a pastor’s bivocational role is bigotry and a blatant attack on religious liberty. The American church must rise up, unite and fight back to defend our God-given rights.”
Social media Sunday and Monday was awash with pastors and lay leaders denouncing the protest inside a church.
While few public figures — if any — voiced support for the church protest, some saw the church protest as not surprising and yet unnecessary.
Craig Nash, managing editor of Good Faith Media, wrote on Facebook: “From religious liberty, prophetic witness and legal perspectives, I have mixed feelings about this. From a practical, resource allocation standpoint, my question is ‘Why?’ What’s the purpose, to draw attention to the fact that an SBC pastor works for ICE? Of course an SBC pastor works for ICE.
“Except for the minuscule percentage of them who have spoken out against the reign of terror of this administration (unsurprisingly, their Black pastors), they all work for the violent removal of innocent children, women and men, either through active support or passive silence. All their pastors do, and most of the people in their pews do. Their denomination was established in white supremacy, and white supremacy continues to sustain it. Drawing attention to it is like drawing attention to the wetness of Sea World.”
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