American citizens walked into Cities Church in St. Paul for a Sunday service and found themselves shouted down, harassed, and terrorized by a band of anti-ICE agitators who deliberately disrupted worship because one of the pastors also works at ICE. This was not protest — it was an attack on the sacred right to worship and an act that should make every decent American furious. The Justice Department moved quickly to treat it as the serious violation it was, and the outrage among worshippers and community leaders was entirely predictable.
The Trump administration’s law-and-order promise wasn’t empty rhetoric this time; Attorney General Pam Bondi personally announced the arrests of key organizers involved in the church raid, and even the provocateur who taunted federal authorities online — the man known as “Da Woke Farmer,” William Kelly — was taken into custody after publicly daring the DOJ to arrest him. Conservatives should salute officials who finally treat attacks on houses of worship as more than a social-media moralizing moment and instead as crimes deserving prosecution.
Federal prosecutors are pursuing serious charges under statutes designed to protect religious liberty and civil rights, including provisions that can elevate obstructing worship into felony conspiracy counts when people conspire to deprive others of their constitutional freedoms. This administration is applying the law where previous administrations talked and tweeted, and it’s precisely what citizens demanded after witnessing chaos in a house of God. Americans who care about order and the rule of law should applaud that decision.
Predictably, establishment media figures who cheer on the radical left tried to frame themselves as mere journalists rather than participants; a judge declined to sign off on charging Don Lemon after prosecutors eyed him, a decision that will infuriate many conservatives who saw his livestreaming as more organizing than reporting. The line between journalism and activism is flimsy when you broadcast and amplify a mob storming a church, and Americans deserved accountability, not excuses.
Local leaders who helped plan or cheer the disruption — including a St. Paul school board member — face not only legal jeopardy but a moral reckoning from their constituents. If you put kids and families at risk and then hide behind “protest” as a shield, you should not hold public trust or sit on boards that shape young lives. The federal response shows that civic responsibility and protection of religious life still matter in this country.
This episode should be a wake-up call: the left’s performative outrage has real-world consequences when it crosses into intimidation and the trampling of sacred spaces. Conservatives must stand unapologetically for the sanctity of worship, for law enforcement that does its duty, and for a government that enforces consequences when mobs try to silence fellow Americans. The message should be clear to anyone tempted to repeat this behavior — churches are off-limits, and patriotic Americans will not cower while sacred freedoms are violated.
