The Justice Department says the agency is investigating an incident in Minnesota on Sunday in which demonstrators disrupted a church service because they believed the pastor has ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The department is “investigating the potential violations of the federal FACE Act by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshipers,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for DOJ’s Civil Rights division, said in an X post Sunday afternoon.
She also shared in the post a video that appears to show the demonstrators disrupting the service in the Minnesota city of St. Paul in an “ICE Out” protest.
FACE is an acronym for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 that in part prohibits the use or “threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking … or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
Minnesota has become a flash point in the Trump administration’s effort to remove illegal migrants living in the U.S. Earlier this month, an ICE agent fatally shot a Minneapolis motorist, Renee Good, who drove toward him when she was leaving a demonstration to block an ICE operation.
In another online video of the church incident, protesters seem to be chanting “Justice for Renee Good” inside the sanctuary at Cities Church as the service began.
