St. Paul police arrest protester on Easter Sunday outside Cities Church
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St. Paul police arrested a woman Sunday for protesting outside Cities Church. The church was the site of an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest that interrupted services in January.
St. Paul police spokesperson Alyssa Arcand said officers working contracted overtime arrested the woman for disrupting a religious service at 8:35 a.m. Fellow protesters said police arrested the woman after she complied with all their orders.
The church on Summit Avenue has been a focal point for activists after about three dozen people showed up to a service in January and chanted “ICE out” and “Renee Good,” after learning one of its pastors, David Easterwood, led the ICE field office in St. Paul.
Federal officials charged nearly 40 people with their involvement in the Jan. 18 demonstration for interrupting a church service, including local journalist Georgia Fort and former CNN host Don Lemon. One woman had her charges dropped because she was later found to not be at the protest.
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St. Paul Police Sgt. Chad Dagenais said the woman on Sunday stepped from the median on Summit Avenue onto the sidewalk in front of the church while making noise with a speaker. Dagenais said police worried the noise from the speaker outside the church would disrupt the service, so they arrested her and booked her into the Ramsey County Jail.
“They were warned repeatedly about the laws and the ordinances and then the arrest was made after the conduct continued,” Dagenais said.
However, Gaz Mulvaney, one of roughly a dozen protesters outside the church, said the woman followed police’s orders.
“She didn’t go out in the street or anything,” Mulvaney said. “She was just on the grass, recording them as she does, and they just came up and arrested her, walked her 10 or 15 feet to a squad car and put her in it.”
Police came out shortly after the gathering started and told the group to keep the noise down. The protesters did have bullhorns and speakers, but Mulvaney said they turned them off.
Mulvaney said the police response was unwarranted. A video posted to Mulvaney’s Facebook profile shows protesters holding bullhorns, but not using them, as they shouted at parishioners about immigration and Jesus Christ’s teachings.
“It’s really frustrating when all we’re doing is practicing our First Amendment right and people get arrested for peacefully protesting and asking what’s going on,” Mulvaney said. “Why? They could have said tone it down. And we did. Immediately. We shut the speakers off. There was no need for this to happen.”
Cities Church did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
The initial protest in January came amid a tense couple months for Minnesota. The Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers for Operation Metro Surge after a series of government fraud cases where the majority of defendants had Somali roots.
Federal officers frequently deployed tear gas for crowd control in neighborhood clashes with activists, often detaining them along with immigrants.
On Jan. 7, a federal officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in south Minneapolis. In another fatal shooting one week after the church protest, a federal officer killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti.
Nationwide demonstrations erupted in response, followed by a change in Operation Metro Surge’s leadership and the eventual wind-down of the immigration enforcement operation in mid-February.
