Bundy says 30 other people have been charged over an anti-customs protest at a Minnesota church

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced federal charges Friday against 30 more people accused of civil rights violations in a January protest inside a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement pastor works.

Bondi said on social media that 25 people had been arrested and more arrests would follow. The new indictment comes a month after freelance journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Forte and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong were charged over their alleged roles in a protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul.

Read more: Read the full indictment against Don Lemon, Georgia Fort and others charged in Minnesota

Bundy accused the group of attacking a house of worship.

“If you do this, you cannot hide from us, we will find you, arrest you and prosecute you,” she wrote on social media.

A live video posted to Facebook shows people interrupting services at Cities Church on January 18 by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” a reference to the woman who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on January 7.

Protesters targeted the church because of its pastor

Protesters descended on the Towns Church after learning that one of the church’s pastors also works as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. The protest drew swift condemnation from Trump administration officials and conservative leaders for disrupting Sunday’s mass.

In total, 39 people now face charges of conspiracy against religious freedom and interference with the right to religious freedom. The new defendants appeared in court for the first time and were released.

Lemon and Forte said they were in the church as journalists covering the news. Levy Armstrong was the subject of a doctored photo released by the White House in which she appears to cry during her arrest. All three pleaded not guilty.

He watches: Arrests of journalists fuel backlash as anti-customs protests spread from Minneapolis

The indictment says the “instigators” entered the church in a “coordinated takeover-style attack” and engaged in acts of intimidation and obstruction.

“Young children were left to wonder, as one child said, whether their parents were going to die,” the indictment said.

The church welcomes more arrests

The church’s lawyer praised the Justice Department for bringing charges against more people.

“The First Amendment does not give anyone — regardless of profession, fame, or politics — a license to break into a church and intimidate, threaten, and terrorize the families and children worshiping inside,” Doug Wardlaw said in a statement.

The revised indictment adds new allegations compared to the original indictment filed in January.

She says two people “conducted reconnaissance” outside the church a day before the protest and recorded their visit on video, with one saying, “My thoughts are to be able to shut down this whole alley here.”

The court file quoted one protester at the church as saying: “This is not the house of God. This is the house of Satan.”

Trahern Cruz, who was indicted in January and is the lead organizer of the Black Lives Matter movement in Minnesota, said the recent arrests were a “waste of time.”

“It is a shame that the people who killed Alex Peretti, Renee Judd or Keith Porter were not arrested, but the peaceful protesters were arrested,” Cruz said. Porter was fatally shot in Los Angeles by an off-duty ICE officer.

Minnesota has been a hotbed of immigration attacks

Levi Armstrong defended the protest shortly after it occurred. She said critics needed to “examine their hearts” if they were more concerned about the disorder than “the atrocities we are witnessing in our society.”

He watches: Minnesota schools and students are reeling from the fallout from the immigration crackdown

The protest came at a tense time in Minnesota, where the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers to Operation MetroSurge after a series of public fraud cases in which the majority of the defendants were of Somali descent. Officers frequently used tear gas to control crowds in neighborhood clashes with residents, and frequently detained them along with migrants.

Jade, 37, was shot and killed in Minneapolis. In another fatal shooting a week after the church protest, a federal officer killed Preeti, a 37-year-old nurse, in the same city.

Demonstrations broke out across the country in response, followed by a change in leadership of Operation MetroSurge and the eventual end of the immigration enforcement operation. Nearly 400 ICE officers and Homeland Security agents are expected to remain in Minneapolis by early March, down from about 3,000 at the peak, according to a court filing.

Since then, the Twin Cities have grappled with the impact on communities and the local economy. Minneapolis said it suffered an impact of $203 million due to the operation, with tens of thousands of residents in need of urgent relief aid.

Separately, a woman who was at a church service filed a lawsuit against some of the people who were charged, claiming emotional trauma and inability to practice her religion that day.

Associated Press writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.