Fifty federal agents don’t show up at your door for nothing.
But despite the outsized operation, Nekima Levy Armstrong — an attorney, civil rights organizer, reverend, and a mother — didn’t commit violence.
Her alleged crime? She walked into a church in St. Paul, Minn., worshiped with the congregation, and asked a question about why their pastor also served as a local director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Monday, January 21, Armstrong gave an interview on Evening WURDs, a nightly public-affairs program on WURD Radio in Philadelphia. The interview was calm, measured, and deeply unsettling, not because of its tone, but because of what it revealed about the current state of protest, policing, and political retaliation in the United States.
Armstrong described her role in organizing community resistance to the aggressive escalation of ICE activity in the Minneapolis region. She spoke not as a provocateur, but as someone deeply rooted in faith, community, and nonviolent action. Reverend/Attorney Armstrong applied a Christian ethos to the tyrannical tirade taking place in her own community.
Her account centered on a protest at Cities Church — a church that, disturbingly, employed a pastor (David Easterwood) who also served as a local director for ICE. According to Armstrong, she and fellow organizers entered the church peacefully. They worshiped alongside congregants. They raised no weapons. They threatened no one.
At a moment during the service, Armstrong, herself an ordained minister, stood and asked a direct, moral question: How could a Christian church, devoted to love, mercy, and justice, employ a leader actively involved in the brutal detention and terrorizing of immigrant neighbors in the Twin Cities’ communities?
Hands were raised. The moment was disruptive.
But it was not violent.
And yet, the coverage that followed, particularly from Fox News, was egregious. The protest was framed as an attack. The organizers were depicted as aggressors. The moral substance of the question was erased, replaced with caricature and fear-mongering.
Independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested Jan. 29 and Jan. 30, respectively, for covering the protest. They were released Jan. 30.
During the WURD interview, Armstrong also described the broader ecosystem of resistance taking shape in the Minneapolis/Twin Cities region. Faith leaders, attorneys, organizers, and everyday citizens are pushing back against the ICE raids that have destabilized entire communities.
As we closed the conversation, I told her: “Be safe.” Given the inflammatory coverage and the heightened tensions on the ground, it felt necessary to say out loud what should never need to be said to a lawyer engaged in peaceful protest. Less than twelve hours later, fifty federal agents stormed Armstrong’s home and arrested her.
Let that sink in.
Fifty federal agents stormed her residence for her efforts to lead a nonviolent protest inside a church.
The Department of Justice publicly celebrated the arrest, charging Armstrong (through the FACE Act) with disrupting worship and invoking “freedom of religion” as justification for an overwhelming show of force. This is not what the FACE Act was designed to do, but like so much of the madness in this moment, the Trump regime intentionally misinterprets the spirit of Civil Rights legislation to limit the freedoms of the very people who marched, bled, and died to establish the significance of civil rights for all American citizens.
According to reporting by The Guardian, DOJ officials went so far as to use artificial intelligence to distort images of Armstrong, falsely depicting her as crying during the arrest. Rev. Armstrong was resolute even as the full force of the federal government actively persecuted her for peacefully protesting the unfolding fascism evident on all of our screens. Armstrong has since been released.
But why would the federal government feel compelled to digitally manipulate the image of a civil-rights attorney? There is only one plausible answer: to degrade, demean, and intimidate. This may ultimately backfire in the court proceedings. Still, we must not look away from or in any way overlook the federal government’s deliberate degradation of Rev. Armstrong’s image. They manipulated the image to undermine a liberation movement and to project their own shame onto a Black woman fighting for our freedom.
The DOJ’s “case” against Armstrong is not about protecting worship. It is about silencing dissent. It is about punishing resistance. It is about sending a message to anyone bold enough to challenge the unchecked power of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – this iteration of the US federal government.
And here is the hypocrisy that cannot be ignored: At the very moment the DOJ is mobilizing extraordinary force against a Black woman attorney for peaceful protest, it has shown little urgency in investigating ICE agents implicated in killings and violent encounters on the streets of Minneapolis. The imbalance is obscene. Protest is criminalized; state violence is normalized.
Under what circumstances did American citizens lose their right to dissent? Under what circumstances does freedom of religion protect institutions but not conscience? Under what circumstances does the federal government deploy AI to obscure truth and manufacture humiliation?
Nekima Levy Armstrong is not a threat to democracy. She is democracy — lived, practiced, and defended. She is a minister and an attorney doing her job. A reverend following her faith. A mother protecting her community. And for that, she has been targeted.
Free Nekima Levy Armstrong. Drop the charges. This case exposes the US Department of Justice as nothing more than a mechanism of political retribution directed by a chaotic federal government committed to the destruction of this democracy.
