Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Friday that 30 more people have been charged in connection with the January 18 protest that stormed a worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Twenty-five of the 30 have already been arrested.
The superseding indictment brings the total number of people facing charges to thirty-nine, all on two federal counts: "Conspiracy Against Right of Religious Freedom at Place of Worship" and "Injure, Intimidate, and Interfere with Exercise of Right of Religious Freedom at Place of Worship."
Bondi posted her announcement on X on Friday afternoon and left no ambiguity about the Justice Department's posture.
"If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you."
On January 18, demonstrators descended on Cities Church during a worship service. The protesters believed one of the pastors at the church also served as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. What followed, according to the indictment, was "a coordinated takeover-style attack" marked by "oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction."
The pastor and congregation were forced to terminate the service. Congregants fled the building out of fear for their safety. Others scrambled to implement an emergency plan. The indictment includes a detail that should stop every reader cold: young children were left to wonder, as one child put it, if their parents were going to die, as The Hill reports.
That is not a protest. That is terrorizing families in a house of worship because of a rumor about one of their pastors.
Among those already facing federal civil rights charges is former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who was arrested for his presence at the church protest. Lemon pleaded not guilty on February 13, arguing he was there in his capacity as a journalist.
The "I was just reporting" defense will face serious scrutiny. Journalists observe events. They don't typically find themselves swept up in what federal prosecutors describe as a coordinated takeover. The indictment does not appear to carve out exceptions for media personalities who happen to be on scene during a mob action against churchgoers. Whether Lemon's account holds up will depend on what the evidence shows about his actual conduct, not his professional title.
His involvement does underscore a pattern: when anti-ICE activism crosses into intimidation and violence, the people present tend to come from a very specific cultural and political ecosystem. That a cable news figure landed in the middle of a federal civil rights case involving a church invasion tells you something about where the lines have blurred.
For years, the left wielded federal civil rights statutes as instruments of its own priorities. The idea that those same laws protect churchgoers from ideologically motivated mobs has apparently come as a shock.
But the statutes are plain. Conspiring to interfere with the free exercise of religion at a place of worship is a federal crime. It does not matter whether the conspirators believed their cause was righteous. It does not matter whether they wrapped their actions in the language of social justice. The law protects the congregation, not the mob's intentions.
Bondi made the principle explicit:
"This Department of Justice STANDS for Christians and all Americans of faith."
That sentence will draw howls from the usual quarters. But it simply restates what federal law already guarantees: Americans have the right to worship without being besieged by activists who decided a church was a legitimate target.
Consider the logic chain that led to January 18. Activists suspected a pastor moonlighted as an ICE officer. Rather than verify the claim, rather than pursue any lawful channel, they organized what prosecutors call a coordinated attack on a Sunday service. They terrified children. They drove families out of their church. They treated a rumor as a license for collective punishment against an entire congregation.
This is where anti-enforcement ideology inevitably leads. Once you define immigration enforcement as inherently immoral, anyone associated with it becomes a target. Once you declare ICE officers enemies of the community, the community's churches are no longer safe. The escalation is built into the premise.
Not one of these defendants paused to consider that they were violating the civil rights of every person in that building. They were too busy congratulating themselves on their courage.
Thirty-nine defendants now face federal charges. Twenty-five of the newly indicted have been taken into custody. Five remain at large. The Justice Department is clearly not treating this as a one-and-done prosecution but as a systematic accounting of everyone involved in the attack.
That matters. For too long, protest culture operated under the assumption that mob action carried no individual consequences. Flash mobs stormed buildings, disrupted institutions, and intimidated private citizens, and the participants melted back into anonymity. The DOJ is signaling that those days are over, at least when the target is a house of worship.
Somewhere in St. Paul, a child asked if their parents were going to die. Thirty-nine people are about to answer for that.
