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By Joshua Scheer
Two community leaders were arrested Sunday after disrupting church services at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The protest targeted a congregation whose internal contradiction has become impossible to ignore: one of its pastors, David Easterwood, also leads the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office.
The arrests, announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi, were framed not as a political flashpoint but as a moral line crossed. “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” Bondi declared.
Yet the arrests come at a moment when the federal government itself has moved to erase long-standing protections that once treated churches as off-limits to immigration enforcement. Under Trump administration policies last new year, places of worship — alongside schools and healthcare facilities — are no longer considered “sensitive locations,” opening the door for ICE arrests within church walls themselves.
With DHS stating “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
So fascist sympathizers see their churches treated as safe spaces deserving of state protection, while those seeking refuge from the unregulated, untrained arm of the Trump regime are denied even the pretense of sanctuary. Resulting is a stark inversion: protestors calling out ICE from the pews are criminalized, while ICE agents are newly empowered to operate inside sanctuaries once understood as moral refuges.
A Pastor, an ICE Chief, and a Protest
According to CBS News, the protest unfolded during Sunday services when activists entered the church and began chanting slogans opposing ICE and demanding justice for Renee Good. One of the protest leaders, Armstrong, is herself an ordained pastor and a prominent local activist.
The symbolism was unmistakable. Cities Church is not merely attended by an ICE official — it is shepherded by one.
For critics, the issue is not disruption for its own sake, but the fusion of religious authority with the machinery of deportation. ICE, long accused of constitutional violations, racial profiling, and brutality, has increasingly operated with impunity. Protesters argue that when enforcement power occupies the pulpit, silence becomes complicity.
The Justice Department, however, framed the action as a violation of the federal FACE Act, which criminalizes interference with religious worship. The New Republic reports that the arrested women are Black community leaders, a detail that sharpens concerns about selective enforcement and political signaling.
Bondi’s warning about “attacks on places of worship” rings loudly — but selectively.
The End of Sanctuary
For decades, churches occupied a special place in immigration enforcement policy. Though not legally immune, they were treated as “sensitive locations,” reflecting a moral consensus that sacred spaces should not double as hunting grounds for the state.
That consensus is now gone.
Under new Department of Homeland Security guidance from last January, immigration agents may enter churches, schools, and hospitals to make arrests. A DHS spokesperson defended the move bluntly: “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”
President Trump himself confirmed the shift in a December 2025 interview, saying the administration would trust agents to “use common sense.”
History offers little comfort about how such discretion is exercised.
As NPR documents, churches have long served as sanctuaries for migrants precisely because the law often fails to distinguish between human dignity and bureaucratic targets. From Central American refugees in the 1980s to today’s asylum seekers, faith communities stepped in where the state imposed cruelty.
American churches have repeatedly positioned themselves as counterweights to state power. In the 19th century, congregations hid enslaved people fleeing bondage. During the Vietnam War, they opened their doors to draft resisters facing prosecution. That tradition of sanctuary later collided with modern immigration enforcement.
The new federal policy directly reverses guidance issued in 2011, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement instructed agents to avoid arrests in so-called “sensitive locations” — including churches, schools, hospitals, and public gatherings — absent extraordinary circumstances. Though the memo’s future was already precarious during Donald Trump’s first term, faith institutions continued to test its limits.
Even under Trump’s first term, churches publicly sheltered undocumented immigrants, including a woman who lived inside an Ohio church for nearly two years. Earlier, during Barack Obama’s second term, faith communities responded to record deportations by openly defying immigration laws, organizing legal defense for migrants, and reclaiming sanctuary as a moral obligation rather than a loophole. In 2014, a Mexican immigrant sought refuge for more than a month inside a Tucson church — a reminder that, until recently, religious spaces functioned as sites of resistance rather than extensions of enforcement.
Now, churches face a grim paradox: they are protected from protest, but not from raids.
A Christian Divide
The controversy exposes a deep and unresolved schism within American Christianity.
Christians in the United States remain sharply divided over immigration enforcement. An estimated 11 million undocumented people live in the country, alongside rising border crossings and asylum requests. The moral question — whether to prioritize care for the stranger or the enforcement of borders — cuts across denominations.
White evangelical Christians have tended to support strong immigration enforcement, often framing it as a matter of law, order, and national security. Catholic leaders, by contrast, have repeatedly spoken in defense of migrant rights, emphasizing hospitality, mercy, and the biblical mandate to protect the vulnerable.
This divide is not merely theological — it is political.
When an ICE field director also serves as a pastor, the boundary between Caesar and God collapses. Enforcement becomes sanctified, and dissent becomes sacrilege.
Whose Worship Is Protected?
Bondi’s declaration that the government “does not tolerate attacks on places of worship” raises an unavoidable question: Whose worship is protected, and from whom?
The Trump administration insists churches must not shield migrants from arrest. But when activists challenge the presence of ICE within a church, the state moves swiftly to prosecute.
The message is clear. Churches may not protect the vulnerable from the government — but they must be protected from those who challenge the government.
That inversion exposes the hollowness of moral rhetoric deployed by power. The state invokes the sanctity of worship not to defend conscience, but to suppress dissent. Meanwhile, the historic role of churches as sanctuaries of last resort is stripped away in the name of “common sense.”
The Cost of Silence
The protest at Cities Church was disruptive. That was the point.
Throughout history, moral crises have rarely been resolved politely. From civil rights sit-ins to antiwar vigils, churches have often been sites of confrontation precisely because they claim moral authority.
When enforcement agencies occupy the pulpit, when sanctuaries become surveillance zones, and when protest is criminalized while raids are normalized, the question is no longer about decorum.
It is about whether faith institutions will serve as shelters for the vulnerable — or as quiet annexes of state power.
In that sense, the arrests in St. Paul are not an isolated incident. They are a warning about the future of dissent, sanctuary, and the uneasy marriage between religion and repression in an age of permanent enforcement.
Remember that tomorrow Friday the 23rd is “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom” — a general strike backed by Minnesota unions, progressive faith leaders, Democratic lawmakers, and community organizations demanding an end to federal immigration enforcement terror in the state.
Organizers are calling on Minnesotans to stay home from work and school, stop shopping, and shut down business as usual. The point is simple: when the state refuses accountability, the people withdraw consent.
A general strike halts economic life to force political change. Though rare in modern America, it is one of the most powerful tools working people have — and one Minnesota knows well.
The strike is a response to the killing of Renee Good by federal agent Jonathan Ross and to the broader pattern of abuse and impunity that ICE represents. Organizers describe the day as one of nonviolent resistance, truth-telling, and collective refusal.
“It is time to suspend the normal order of business to demand an immediate end to ICE operations in Minnesota, accountability for federal agents who have caused loss of life and abuse, and direct intervention by Congress,”
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