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On Sunday, January 18, 2026, a mob of anti-ICE agitators stormed Cities Church in St. Paul and deliberately disrupted a Sunday service, shouting down worshippers with chants of “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good” while livestreaming the chaos. Video of the intrusion spread quickly online and left parishioners — including children — frightened and shaken in what should have been a sacred place of worship.
The protesters targeted the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, also serves in a leadership role with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a fact the mob used to justify their intimidation campaign. There is a difference between lawful protest and barging into a sanctuary to harass a congregation, and the line the left crossed was blatant and deliberate.
The Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights probe into the incident, with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon signaling the agency is examining whether the disruption violated laws protecting the right to worship. Federal statutes exist precisely to deter this kind of targeted intimidation, and the DOJ’s involvement is an appropriate response to what was effectively an attack on religious liberty.
Conservative leaders and pastors across the country have rightly condemned this invasion of a house of worship as an un-American act of intimidation that must not be normalized. When mobs are allowed to silence Christians in their own churches, the fabric of civil society unravels; prosecutors should move swiftly and without fear to hold perpetrators accountable.
Context matters: the protests followed the tragic shooting death of Renee Good during an ICE operation earlier this month, a case that has inflamed passions and stoked calls for protest. But even in heated times, lawful accountability for government action does not include storming a sanctuary or threatening congregants — those are tactics of lawlessness, not justice.
If we value both the rule of law and religious freedom, there is no wiggle room here — these people can and should be prosecuted under the FACE Act and other applicable federal laws. Law-abiding Americans must demand that federal and local authorities do their job: secure our communities, protect places of worship, and ensure that political theater from the radical left does not get a free pass to terrorize innocent citizens.
