MINNEAPOLIS (BP) – The affidavit that authorized the arrest of several Cities Church disruptors shares details of how worshippers at the church were surprised, frightened and left wondering if they were going to be allowed to leave the church building when protesters interrupted their service Jan. 18.
In the affidavit, Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Timothy Gerber said, “Statements made by agitators at the church indicated that they targeted the church based on their belief that one of the church’s pastors is a federal immigration officer.”
Cities Church is affiliated with the Twin Cities Metro Baptist Association, the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Tensions were high in Minneapolis following the shooting of a woman Jan. 7 who appeared to be moving her car toward an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. U.S. Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem said the SUV driven by Renee Good, 37, was impeding the arrests the agents were making.
FOX9 in Minneapolis reported Jan. 14 that more than 2,000 arrests have been made since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.
Gerber said based on video evidence, the organizers appear to have gathered at a nearby shopping center to finalize plans to disrupt the church service.
He says 30-40 people “disrupted the religious service and intimidated, harassed, oppressed, and terrorized the parishioners, including young children, and caused the service to be cut short and forced parishioners to flee the church out of a side door, which resulted in one female victim falling and suffering an injury.”
“Some of the protestors also physically obstructed some parishioners as they attempted to leave the church and the adjacent parking areas,” Gerber wrote in the report.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney and activist, Chauntyll Louisa Allen, community organizer and a member of the St. Paul School Board, and William Kelly, an activist who videoed the protest, were arrested Jan. 22.
A federal magistrate judge declined to issue charges against former CNN host Don Lemon, who livestreamed the protest and interviewed several attending the church service, including Pastor Jonathan Parnell.
According to the court filing, parents were blocked from getting their children from the church’s childcare area.
“Victim 4 informed agents that members of their parish attempted to retrieve their children from the childcare area located downstairs, but the agitators were blocking the stairs, and the parents were unable to get to their children,” Gerber said.
“Victim 4 recalled one agitator was threatening, aggressive, and intimidating towards parishioners. Additionally, this agitator was screaming and getting in people’s faces, to include women and young children. This agitator continued to scream in the faces of young children while they were crying,” he said in the affidavit.
The document also provides details of a victim who was confronted and called pastor by one of the disrupters.
“Victim 6 recalled an African-American woman yelling ‘EXCUSE ME PASTOR, EXCUSE ME PASTOR, do you know you’re harboring ICE Agent [victim 1]?’,” Gerber said.
The same victim told investigators that Kelly shouted “Nazi” in people’s faces and said to children, “do you know your parents are nazis, they’re going to be burn in hell.”
Victim 6 said he feared the disruptors were not going to allow people leave and that they “were going to harm victim 1’s family for harboring victim 1.”
Victim 6 also said his own children were “traumatized” and they feared more people would come to their home since their “face was on the church’s website.”
He told the investigator that his child said, “Daddy, I thought you were going to die.”
Kelly and Allen have been charged with conspiracy to deprive rights, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X Jan. 22, based on an 1871 act prohibiting those who would conspire to deny the rights of others.
The act was passed to prohibit Ku Klux Klan acts of intimidation aimed at preventing formerly enslaved people from gathering freely. It says those in groups of two or more cannot “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” to prevent them from doing so. The language further includes those who “go in disguise” and “on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder” gatherings.
In an interview with Baptist Press Jan. 22, the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s Miles Mullin called the disruption “unacceptable” and said church services “should be sacrosanct.”
Mullin, ERLC chief of staff, quoted from Article 17 of the Baptist Faith and Message, the SBC’s statement of faith, saying, “The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends.”
Americans should expect elected officials to protect their Constitutional rights, Mullin said.
“It does seem appropriate that if a group is disrupting a constitutional right, the state should act to preserve that,” he said.
North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell believes the affidavit reveals the distress faced by those inside Cities Church Jan. 18.
“These new details make clear the anguish these protesters caused – especially to children and families who had no warning of what was about to happen,” Ezell told Baptist Press in written comments.
Minnesota-Wisconsin Executive Director Trey Turner said hearing these statements was a “shock to my system.”
“As a pastor, my heart goes out to the parents and leaders,” Turner said.
Ezell said he was grateful for the Justice Department’s work. “In a world marked by violence, some genuinely feared for their lives,” he said. “No one should be subjected to that. This is not only about the freedom to worship and gather, but about basic human decency.”
Turner called the disruption traumatic but says this is no time to for churches to step back from compassion. He has been talking with Minneapolis-area ethnic pastors on a regular basis.
“People know we care about what happened inside Cities Church. This is a wonderful time for the immigrant community to know Christians care about them,” Turner said.
“This is the time for us to step in the gap to offer personal compassion,” he said.