Church protesters freed as White House circulates fake arrest image
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Three activists charged with federal civil rights violations for disrupting a church service in St. Paul were released from pretrial detention Friday after judges rejected requests from prosecutors to keep them jailed.
Rev. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a prominent Black Twin Cities civil rights attorney, led a demonstration Sunday inside Cities Church in St. Paul after learning that David Easterwood, a St. Paul field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is part of the church’s ministry team.
Court documents show that Easterwood, who is listed on the church’s website, has testified about ICE operations in a recent lawsuit in which six people allege that masked agents illegally threatened or detained them.
Levy Armstrong is accused along with Chauntyll Allen, who is also Black, of conspiring to deprive the congregation of its First Amendment freedom to worship. Also charged in the complaint is activist William Kelly.
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Levy Armstrong and Allen, who is also a St. Paul School Board member, made their initial appearances Thursday in a St. Paul federal courtroom. Kelly was released from custody after a separate hearing Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Doug Micko denied a motion from Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rob Keenan and Orlando Sanza to keep the women jailed, but the two remained behind bars for nearly 24 hours after the Thursday hearing while prosecutors appealed.
Levy Armstrong and Allen left the Sherburne County Jail Friday afternoon, soon after U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino rejected the government’s appeal of Micko’s decision to release the two.
Levy Armstrong and Allen were not immediately available for comment to MPR News, but in a video taken at the jail that independent journalist Georgia Fort posted to social media on Friday, Levy Armstrong is seen embracing her husband Marques Armstrong.
“Glory to God,” she said.
“I’m safe, I’m safe,” Allen added.
Courtroom chaos
The activists’ initial appearance, a normally routine hearing in which defendants are advised of their rights and informed of the charges against them, was unusually chaotic after Keenan and Sanza arrived without key documents critical to the government’s case.
The prosecutors submitted a criminal complaint to Micko, but they did not include the arrest warrants that included the government’s reasons for charging and detaining Levy Armstrong and Allen.
“I did not see in that complaint copies of the arrest warrants,” Micko said. “Defendants have the right to understand what they’re charged with.”
After defense attorneys Jordan Kushner and Jill Brisbois told Micko that they never received copies of the warrants even at the time federal agents arrested their clients, Keenan asked an agent sitting in the courtroom gallery if she had a copy.
When no one from the government was able to produce the document, Micko called a ten-minute recess while prosecutors retrieved it.
Micko noted after reading the warrants that the government failed to show probable cause for one of the charges listed in its initial charging documents that had accused the defendants of violating the FACE Act. The 1994 law prohibits using or threatening force to obstruct access to reproductive health clinics or places of worship.
Trump Administration, church praise prosecution
Hours after the Sunday protest, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote on her official X account that DOJ would investigate the protestors for “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers” in potential violation of the FACE Act.
The criminal complaint, unsealed Friday, only charges Kelly, Allen, and Levy Armstrong with a federal civil rights crime known as conspiracy against rights.
“Religious freedom is the bedrock of the United States - there is no First Amendment right to obstruct someone from practicing their religion,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement Friday.
Representatives for Cities Church praised the Justice Department’s efforts in their own statement on Thursday.
“The First Amendment does not allow premeditated plots or coordinated actions to violate the sanctity of a sanctuary, disrupt worship, and intimidate small children,” said attorney Renee Carlson with the conservative advocacy group True North Legal.
“The Constitution protects citizens from threats against fundamental rights by the government, but it also requires government to protect those same rights when they are jeopardized by private actors,” Carlson added.
Prosecutors seek to keep activists jailed
At the Thursday hearing, Keenan and Sanza argued that the demonstrators should remain jailed because they “terrorized” the congregation.
“They perceived it as very threatening. They essentially thought they were at risk of harm,” Keenan said of the church-goers.
In support of this claim, Keenan said that a parishioner slipped on the icy pavement and broke her arm after fleeing out of a side door.
The government has not alleged that any of the protesters, whom they refer to as “agitators” in the complaint, directly injured anyone or caused any damage to church property.
On an earlier video that Fort published after the demonstration, Levy Armstrong is heard loudly telling the congregation about Easterwood’s affiliation with ICE.
“David Easterwood is a pastor here,” Levy Armstrong said. “He is also the director of the Field Office for ICE and Saint Paul. So someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God is out there overseeing ICE agents.”
Micko on Thursday rejected the government’s motion to detain Levy-Armstrong and Allen as well as a request to have the two post $10,000 cash bail on their own without the services of a bail bondsman.
In another unusual move, prosecutors appealed Micko’s release order to a district judge. Micko granted the government a stay, meaning that Levy Armstrong and Allen would remain behind bars for another 24 hours until Provinzino rejected the prosecutors’ appeal.
Pretrial detention is not meant to be punitive; in the federal system it’s used in cases where defendants are accused of violent or other serious crimes or pose a risk of fleeing prosecution. Monetary bond is also rare in Minnesota’ federal courts. Most defendants charged with non-violent crimes, like the dozens in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, are set free after promising to appear at future court hearings and abide by the judge’s release conditions.
‘Fascism right at work,’ says defense attorney after White House posts fake photo
Speaking to reporters and other activists in the courthouse lobby on Thursday, Kushner, who represents Levy Armstrong called the prosecution a purely political move.
“This is fascism right at work right now where you go to jail and prison because you exercise your First Amendment right to criticize the government,” Kushner said.
The White House on Thursday posted doctored images to social media of Levy-Armstrong crying as agents took her away in handcuffs.
Kushner, who witnessed the arrest, said his client never shed a tear.
“She was completely calm and composed and rational. There was no one crying. This is outrageous defamation, and it shows the racism and fascism of this administration that they’re literally willing to invent reality to serve their narrative,” Kushner said.
Kushner added that federal authorities denied his client’s request to self surrender, the usual process for people charged with nonviolent crimes.
The White House did not respond to emailed questions about its use of the digitally-manipulated image. A half hour before the Trump Administration’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted the phony photo, Homeland Security Secretary posted an unmodified photo to her official X account of Levy Armstrong’s arrest.
‘This isn’t going to be on Twitter,’ says federal agent before White House posts doctored arrest photo
It’s rare for federal authorities to release images of defendants being taken into custody.
A video that Marques Armstrong, Levy Armstrong’s husband, recorded of the arrest, shows the origin of the fake and real images that the Trump Administration published on X.
In the clip, three federal agents wearing winter coats and khaki pants are seen approaching Levy Armstrong in the hallway of a downtown Minneapolis hotel. The men are not wearing face coverings.
Levy Armstrong was staying at the hotel after her home address was posted online and she received death threats, said fellow activist Monique Cullars-Doty in a phone interview with MPR News on Friday. Federal prosecutors, providing no evidence, alleged at the Thursday hearing that Levy Armstrong and Allen were hiding out in the hotel to evade arrest.
“I just ask you to treat me with dignity and respect,” Levy Armstrong tells the agents.
“That’s all we want to do,” they respond, even as one points a phone at Levy Armstrong and records video
“I would ask that you not record if it doesn’t have to be,” Levy Armstrong says. “I don’t want to be a trophy for MAGA.”
“I was instructed to record just to make sure there’s a record of everything,” an agent responds. “It’s not going to be on Twitter. It’s not going to be on anything like that,” he adds.
“They won’t arrest [ICE agent] Jonathan Ross for killing Renee Good, but they will arrest me for leading a church protest,” Levy Armstrong says as she’s led to a waiting vehicle and taken to the federal courthouse in St. Paul.
The civil rights statute under which the Justice Department is charging the activists has traditionally been used to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan and other violent white supremacist groups, said Adam Safwat, who wrote a law review article about the statute while a student at Duke University School of Law in 1993.
Now a white collar defense attorney with the firm Foley Hoag in Washington, D.C., Safwat said in a phone interview with MPR News on Friday that the government may find it challenging to prove that the activists entered Cities Church with the intent to deprive the parishioners of their First Amendment right to exercise their faith.
“Certainly they disrupted that,” Safwat said after viewing video of the demonstration. “But there’s no indication that they entered with the intent of terrifying them, trying to dissuade them from worshipping, trying to scatter them from the church, trying to prevent them from entering the church.”
Safwat said that if a grand jury returns a felony indictment against the activists and the case goes to trial, prosecutors are likely to focus on the fact that the activists entered the sanctuary uninvited.
“They’ll also look to see if there’s any evidence of physical intimidation by the way the protesters may have been moving around in the church. They’ll look carefully to see if there was any evidence that the protesters were asked to leave and didn’t.”
The unsealed criminal complaint also includes a half dozen redacted names along with Levy Armstrong, Allen, and Kelly. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department is pursuing charges against any other people who took part in the protest.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that a judge refused to approve a criminal complaint against journalist Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor who was present at the church demonstration.
