How ICE Coordinates with Local Police During Protests at Churches

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When federal officers arrested Don Lemon in Los Angeles on January 29, 2026, the former CNN anchor became an unlikely test case for a question most Americans never think about: How does Immigration and Customs Enforcement coordinate with local police when protests erupt at churches? The answer involves overlapping federal programs, states refusing to cooperate, and unclear constitutional rules.

Lemon’s arrest stemmed from his coverage of a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, where approximately thirty demonstrators disrupted a Sunday service. Federal prosecutors thought he was committing conspiracy to violate civil rights.

The mechanics of who arrested whom, under what authority, and through what coordination between federal and local agencies reveal something most people don’t realize: immigration enforcement in America depends heavily on local cooperation that states can—and increasingly do—refuse to provide.

ICE and Local Police Coordination: The 287(g) Program

Immigration enforcement is exclusively federal. The Tenth Amendment reserves to the states all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, but immigration has long been recognized as Washington’s domain under the Constitution’s enumerated powers. This creates an operational problem for ICE: when officers want access to local jails, local knowledge, or local muscle, they need state and local governments to volunteer.

The primary tool is the 287(g) program, named after a federal law that lets ICE work with local police. Established in 1996, it allows ICE to deputize local officers to perform immigration enforcement functions. Three models exist, each granting different levels of authority.

The Task Force Model is the most expansive. It lets local officers question, detain, and arrest people they suspect of violating immigration laws while on regular patrol. The Jail Enforcement Model allows officers to interrogate incarcerated people about immigration status and issue requests to keep someone in jail longer so ICE can pick them up. The Warrant Service Officer Model is narrowest: local officers can execute ICE warrants inside their own jails but can’t interrogate anyone about immigration status.

When Trump took office in January 2025, his administration immediately pushed to expand these agreements. Minnesota became a flashpoint.

Minnesota’s Legal Limits on ICE Cooperation

Under Minnesota law, local cops can’t hold someone on an ICE detainer if that person would otherwise walk free under state law. The constitutional logic: ICE can’t order local officers around. There must be voluntary agreement, and that agreement can’t exceed the authority those officers possess under state law. If state law doesn’t authorize holding people based on immigration status, even a 287(g) agreement can’t grant that power.

ICE obtains most deportations of people already in local jails through transfers, not street arrests. Minnesota’s legal opinion didn’t stop that pipeline. It added friction.

Churches as Public or Private Spaces

The Constitution protects people from unreasonable police searches. ICE can’t enter private areas—pastor’s offices, administrative spaces, private prayer rooms—without a warrant signed by a judge. But they can enter public spaces without one: lobbies, main sanctuaries during public worship, parking lots.

The demonstration at Cities Church occurred during a scheduled public worship service in the main sanctuary. Public space, not private. Which means ICE agents or local police responding to calls about disruption could enter without a warrant.

Churches have long claimed sanctuary status as religious practice, drawing on centuries of Christian tradition. But the legal weight of such claims under federal law remains murky. The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled definitively on whether the First Amendment protects churches from police entering to arrest someone. Churches argue the government can only limit religious practice if it has a really important reason and no other way to achieve it.

First Amendment Limits on Protest in Private Religious Spaces

The First Amendment protects protest and political speech. But that protection has spatial limits.

The First Amendment stops the government from limiting speech. It doesn’t compel private institutions to host expression they don’t invite. Courts distinguish between spaces where the government must allow free speech and private spaces where property owners set their own rules.

Churches can control who speaks during worship services. They’re private religious gatherings, typically on private property, convened for a constitutionally protected purpose: religious exercise.

Protesters can peacefully picket on public sidewalks outside churches, hand out leaflets on public property, and hold quiet demonstrations that don’t interfere with access or worship. What they can’t do: enter a church building and shut down a religious service.

By blocking the aisle and refusing to leave when asked, prosecutors argued, the protesters prevented congregants from fully participating in worship and created a climate of fear.

The Journalist Question

The inclusion of Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort among those charged illuminates how federal and local authorities determine who’s participating in alleged crimes versus who’s documenting them.

A magistrate judge, Douglas Micko, initially declined to sign arrest warrants for Lemon and Fort, noting they didn’t appear to meet the probable cause standard. After the Justice Department appealed, a grand jury indicted them anyway.

According to the indictment, prosecutors alleged Lemon wasn’t merely observing but actively participating in conspiracy. They pointed to his livestreaming of a pre-protest gathering where he reported the group was preparing for a “resistance” operation; his apparent efforts to maintain operational secrecy by reminding participants not to disclose the church location; his alleged physical obstruction of congregants trying to leave.

Criminal charges against journalists over their work activities are extraordinarily rare in American legal practice. The First Amendment protects journalists bearing witness to news and events, ensuring they can report freely in the public interest.

But journalists don’t have immunity from generally applicable laws. The question of where coverage ends and participation begins can become legally murky in situations involving civil disobedience or illegal activity.

Federal prosecutors are pursuing this case after two federal judges expressed skepticism about the underlying probable cause. That suggests a willingness to escalate legal action in politically charged cases, regardless of judicial pushback.

The potential chilling effect on journalistic coverage of immigration enforcement operations is significant. Journalists may become more cautious about embedding with protesters or advocates when federal agents are present, knowing they could face federal conspiracy charges for their coverage decisions.

State-Level Resistance and Federal Leverage

Minnesota’s response demonstrates a fundamental tension in American federalism: the federal government’s exclusive authority over immigration law creates operational dependencies on state and local cooperation, but states retain power to decline that cooperation.

States can decline to cooperate with ICE, prohibit their law enforcement agencies from conducting immigration enforcement, and in some circumstances, prosecute federal agents for excessive force or other state law violations committed while carrying out federal duties. The legal principle: states aren’t obligated to assist in federal enforcement of federal laws, though they can’t actively prevent the federal government from enforcing those laws itself.

But the federal government possesses leverage. The Trump administration explicitly threatened to cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities and states that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement. This uses federal funding as pressure to force state cooperation, creating pressure for cooperation even in states like Minnesota that have adopted sanctuary policies.

ICE Officials as Church Leaders

The presence of ICE official David Easterwood serving as pastor at Cities Church introduces a dimension most people haven’t considered: having ICE officials as church leaders raises questions about whether the church is being used by the government.

Several religious organizations have filed legal documents supporting litigation challenging the Protected Areas policy rescission, arguing it places minority faith communities in particular danger of government targeting and surveillance.

Religious leaders across denominational lines have articulated concerns that eliminating protections for immigration enforcement at sensitive locations, combined with integrating ICE personnel into congregations, creates an environment where immigrants can’t access houses of worship with confidence they’re safe from federal enforcement.

The Mennonite Church, Quaker meetings, Evangelical Lutheran Church congregations, and other faith communities have joined litigation specifically to restore protections for houses of worship from ICE enforcement.

Courts have held in several recent cases that religious freedom law protected the right of people of faith to serve migrants—including humanitarian aid workers who left food and water in the desert and a pastor who ministered at the Southern border—without government interference or prosecution.

But courts haven’t clearly established whether this law protects houses of worship from immigration enforcement operations designed to detain congregation members. Nor have courts established whether an ICE official serving as pastor creates a legal conflict that might support claims the church has been used as a tool by the federal government.

What This Case Reveals About ICE-Local Police Coordination

First: the primary mechanism of ICE-local police coordination, the 287(g) program, has become significantly more prevalent, but state-level legal opinions and sanctuary policies are creating friction.

Second: prosecuting journalists for coverage of the church protest—after two federal judges declined to issue arrest warrants—represents an unusual escalation in how the federal government treats journalists covering immigration enforcement. While courts haven’t ruled on the merits, the decision to prosecute journalists after judicial rejection of probable cause suggests willingness to escalate legal action in politically charged cases.

Third: the case demonstrates what happens when states and the federal government disagree about immigration enforcement. Minnesota’s response involved state-level legal opinions limiting sheriff authority, sanctuary ordinances at the city level, federal lawsuits, and coordination with community organizations and churches to provide support and documentation.

Pending Legal Proceedings

Multiple legal proceedings remain pending. Federal charges against Lemon and others are expected to proceed to trial, where courts will determine whether journalists covering protests can be prosecuted for civil rights violations based on their presence at and documentation of protest activity.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act litigation filed by multiple faith communities, if successful, could restore some protections for houses of worship from ICE enforcement, potentially creating new legal constraints on ICE-local police coordination at religious sites.

The practical impact will likely determine how federal, state, and local authorities coordinate—or fail to coordinate—on immigration enforcement for years. In jurisdictions where states and localities decline to cooperate with ICE, federal enforcement will become more resource-intensive and more dependent on federal personnel conducting operations entirely independently. In jurisdictions where local authorities embrace cooperation through 287(g) agreements and other mechanisms, immigration enforcement will likely become more integrated into routine local law enforcement operations.

The question of whether houses of worship will be protected from ICE enforcement, either in practice or by law, remains unsettled. So does the question of what constitutional protections journalists possess when documenting immigration enforcement activities and protest responses.

As immigration enforcement intensifies and the Trump administration continues prioritizing deportations, these institutional and constitutional questions will recur repeatedly. The mechanics of ICE-local police coordination—whether through formal 287(g) agreements, informal information sharing, or contested responses to federal enforcement operations—will shape the practical reality of immigration enforcement in America’s cities. They’ll determine who bears the burden of federal enforcement operations and who retains power to resist or constrain them.

In Minnesota, ICE coordination with local police is a fight. In other states, it’s cooperation. The difference matters.

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