An organizer of the anti-immigration protest in a Minnesota church over the weekend spoke out on Wednesday evening to correct falsehoods that have spread about the event.
Last week, a protest erupted in Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where one of the pastors is allegedly a leader in the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. The protest sparked outrage within the MAGA movement, and officials in President Donald Trump's Department of Justice have said they plan to prosecute the protesters.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a lawyer and one of the protest organizers, said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" on Wednesday that the version of events that has been portrayed in the media is inaccurate, and offered shocking new details that shed light on how the whole event unfolded.
Armstrong said protesters did not rush into the church, as has been claimed. Instead, they sat in the church and participated in the service. Armstrong said she spoke to a pastor about the alleged ICE officer who works at the church after a prayer. That's when the situation started to escalate.
"The pastor said, 'Shame, shame!'" Armstrong said. "And that is when I led us to chant 'Justice for Renee Good' and 'Hands up, don't shoot.'"
Videos circulating online largely show the chanting that occurred at the protest. Very few, if any, depict how the protest began.
"My faith informs my activism, and I think the question should be what would lead a church like Cities Church to have someone in a role that presents an inherent conflict of interest as being both a pastor as well as not just an ICE agent, but the director of ICE in Minnesota," Armstrong said.