President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the anti-ICE activists who stormed a Minnesota church on Sunday were professional “troublemakers” who should be incarcerated or “thrown out of the country.”
Trump’s comments come as his Justice Department has pledged to bring charges against the leftists who entered Cities Church in St. Paul and recited chants like “Justice for Renee Good,” “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and “ICE out of Minnesota.” Former CNN host Don Lemon livestreamed the protest under the guise of being an independent journalist.
“Just watched footage of the Church Raid in Minnesota by the agitators and insurrectionists. These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act. They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Tuesday morning.
The protest was organized and promoted by the Racial Justice Network and Black Lives Matter Twin Cities.
Cities Church was targeted because one of its pastors works for ICE. William Kelly, a prominent professional protester who has demonstrated outside the church of War Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington, D.C., was among those who entered the sanctuary during the Sunday morning service.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said Monday that charges for those involved in the protest are forthcoming. She also suggested that Lemon could face charges if he knowingly participated in a conspiracy against civil rights.
“I see various crimes that have occurred,” she told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday. “Exactly what they are I’m not going to flag, but the FACE Act has been mentioned as one of the predicates there. In other cases, the Biden DOJ used the Klan Act conspiracy charges tacked onto the FACE Act in the case of protests outside abortion clinics to bring much longer sentences.”
The FACE Act protects the rights of those attending worship services to be free from disruption.
Dhillon told The Daily Wire that two Justice Department prosecutors traveled to Minnesota on Monday to handle the case.
“You can have your protest in a park, you can have a march, you can get a permit for a large gathering, but you can’t just go wherever you want and tear things up and disrupt,” she said. “And that’s what these people did. And so now, people are afraid to go to church. And that is an absolute disgrace in this country.”