(AFP) – The US attorney general announced Thursday the arrest of three people for allegedly disturbing a church service while protesting the massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota, as Vice President JD Vance prepared to visit the state. Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen, and William Kelly were arrested in connection with a Sunday protest at Cities Church in the state capital St. Paul, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on X.
St. Paul and the neighboring metropolis of Minneapolis have been the epicenter of a major deployment of federal agents by the Trump administration to the Democratic-led northern US state. Tensions have flared in the state over a wave of arrests and the killing of protester Renee Good, 37, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. Vance, who has aggressively defended the officer who shot Good dead in her car on January 7, was in Minnesota Thursday and expected to meet ICE officers, as well as community and business figures.
During an earlier speech in Toledo, Ohio, Vance called on protesters to “stop fighting immigration enforcement.” “This country belongs to Americans and… the American Dream belongs to the citizens who built this nation,” he said. Department of Homeland Security and FBI “agents executed an arrest in Minnesota,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X. “So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church,” Bondi said. “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” she warned.
She later wrote that officers had also arrested Allen and Kelly for the action where an immigration official was apparently leading a service, according to US media. “WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP,” she posted. FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X that Armstrong had been arrested under the FACE Act, a law intended to protect those seeking to access abortion clinics and places of worship.
Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state which, if granted by a federal judge, would pause the sweeps. There will be a hearing on the application Monday. There have been confrontations between federal agents and protesters who have demanded a full investigation of Good’s killing, with officers frequently deploying pepper spray and tear gas. A number of school children have walked out of classes in protest at the ICE operation in the city.
The officer who fired the shots that killed Good, Jonathan Ross, has neither been suspended nor charged with any crime. Trump and his officials quickly defended his actions as being legitimately made in self-defense. The federal immigration sweeps in Minneapolis have occurred amid a highly politicized fraud investigation in Minnesota.
– Roberto Schmidt, with Gregory Walton in New York
© 2024 AFP
