Trump Says 'Agitators' In Minnesota Church Should Be Jailed, Wants Broader Investigation
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Donald Trump said that people who stormed a Minneapolis church over the past weekend should be jailed, while calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate two local Democratic politicians.
“Just watched footage of the Church Raid in Minnesota by the agitators and insurrectionists. These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on early Tuesday.
The individuals who appeared at the church “are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting “ICE out,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “Justice for Renee Good,” a protester who was shot in Minnesota by an ICE agent as she hit him with her car while trying to escape custody. The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors also leads the local ICE field office overseeing some operations in the Twin Cities area.
Responding to the church incident, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the department is investigating federal civil rights violations who she said were “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she wrote in a post on social media.
Dhillon said in an interview with the Daily Wire that DOJ prosecutors went to Minneapolis on Monday to investigate the church case, suggesting that the protesters were violating the rights of the church-goers.
“You can have your protest in a park, you can have a march, you can get a permit for a large gathering, but you can’t just go wherever you want and tear things up and disrupt,” she told the outlet. “And that’s what these people did. And so now, people are afraid to go to church. And that is an absolute disgrace in this country.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi has also written that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted by the department.
In his social media post, Trump also took aim at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), calling on the DOJ to investigate both in response to the recent unrest in Minnesota.
Both Walz and Omar have been critical of the Trump administration’s operation targeting illegal immigration in Minnesota, with Omar saying last week that the Twin Cities area is “under attack” by the federal government.
“There is no modern precedent for this level of federal overreach, violence, and lawlessness carried out in the name of immigration enforcement,” she said.
Walz also said that he believes Trump is seeking “violence in the streets” with the federal operation, adding that “Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace.” He then said, “Don’t give him what he wants.”
The Epoch Times contacted Walz’s and Omar’s offices for comment on Tuesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.