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The Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday that her office has opened an investigation into the Minnesota anti-ICE protesters who disrupted a church service on Sunday.
Harmeet Dhillon said her office will utilize both the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to bring the protesters to justice, among them former CNN anchor Don Lemon.
“We’re putting the facts together, and this is a very serious matter,” the AAG asserted. “Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this. Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.”
Lemon recorded and posted to Bluesky his interview with radical activist Nekima Levy Armstrong who, along with her group, interrupted the worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul, entering the church as they yelled “ICE out!” and accusing pastor David Easterwood of being affiliated with ICE.
As The Hill reported, Easterwood appeared with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a Minneapolis press conference in October where he was introduced as the acting director of ICE’s St. Paul Field Office.
“These are scenes out of another era and another place,” Dhillon posted to X on Monday. “They are not American scenes. They have no place in America. This conduct is illegal under federal law.”
Appearing earlier as a guest on “The Benny Show,” Dhillon also condemned the actions by the protesters who disrupted the worship service.
"It is evil to attack any house of worship in America,” she underscored. “It is illegal, and what I saw yesterday made me ashamed, frankly, for the United States, that we have an attorney general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a district attorney, Mary Moriarty, a mayor, Jacob Frey and Tim Walz - Tampon Tim – who absolutely refuse to enforce our state laws – their own state laws prohibit this very conduct.”
“Well, if they’re not going to enforce their laws, we will enforce our federal laws, and we are already doing that,” Dhillon asserted.
As DOJ states, the FACE Act “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
“The prior administration prosecuted people under the FACE act for peacefully praying outside abortion clinics where unborn children are being killed inside – now that’s protected by federal law,” Dhillon observed to Benny Johnson. “That’s up to Congress. However, that same law gives us the right at the Department of Justice to prosecute the same kind of conduct vis-a-vis any house of worship.”
The AAG noted that the First Amendment of the Constitution “includes the right to pray without interference. It includes the right of these people to not have so-called journalists and a mob of activists disrupt their sacred day of prayer.”
“And, so, as far as I can tell, these very foolish people have already, many of them self-identified online as to who they were,” Dhillon continued. “They posted who their accomplices were. Don Lemon has made numerous admissions online as to his participation here and his intention and his knowledge of what was going to happen inside that sacred place. And, so, we’re gathering the facts, and there will be action here.”
Dhillon explained as well that the Biden DOJ “used the Klan Act conspiracy charges tacked on to the FACE Act in the case of protests outside abortion clinics to bring much longer sentences. So, there are a number of tools available to us.”The Klan Act, the AAG said, “is one of the most important federal civil rights statutes, and it goes back to the time when President Lincoln emancipated the slaves. And yet the southern states – Dixiecrats mainly – were refusing to give them equal rights. In fact, you had sheriffs and you had law enforcement harassing the newly freed slaves.”
“So, the Klan Act is a law that makes it illegal to terrorize citizens, to violate their civil rights, to get together and conspire to violate their civil rights,” Dhillon continued. “It is often used against law enforcement, but is now used against others as well. So, whenever anyone conspires to violate the protected civil rights of American citizens, the Klan Act can be used to bring a conspiracy charge.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also took to X Sunday to note that President Donald Trump “will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.”
“The Department of Justice has launched a full investigation into the despicable incident that took place earlier today at a church in Minnesota,” Leavitt affirmed.
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