Minnesota churches roiled by legal battle over ICE surveillance and right to protest

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Court cases involving Twin Cities churches and immigration enforcement highlight how the acrimonious debate continues to roil faith communities more than six months since the federal surge turned Minnesota into a symbol of defiance of the Trump administration’s policies.

In one case, a Minneapolis Baptist church — alongside congregations nationwide — asked for the government to be reprimanded after spying on protest-related activity on its property. In another, more than three dozen protesters have asked for their charges to be dismissed after they disrupted a worship service in a St. Paul church where one of the pastors was also a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.

Even congregations uninvolved in the court cases say they’re still feeling the repercussions of the weekslong surge in immigration operations last winter. Protesters confronted federal law enforcement daily, and the killing of two protesters sparked global outcry.

Immigration agents are no longer visibly active on the same residential block as Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. But its pastor says the signs that went up in January stating “Everyone is welcome here! Except I.C.E.” have stayed.

“I don’t foresee a time when they will come down. We want our building to remain a sanctuary for many people,” said the Rev. Ingrid Rasmussen. Her church provided whistles, which protesters across the city used to alert neighbors about law enforcement presence.

For decades, congregations have been on the front lines of providing for immigrants and refugees, whether in their faith communities or with outreach ranging from food distribution at the U.S.-Mexico border to advocacy in Washington.

As part of its sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, President Donald Trump's current administration gave agents more leeway to make arrests at houses of worship.

In response, dozens of religious groups sued, heralding a more openly adversarial relationship between many faith leaders and federal authorities.

That has continued through surges last fall and winter in various parts of the country, with faith leaders arrested during anti-enforcement protests and suing to make pastoral visits to detained migrants.

“There’s been a pretty dramatic increase in lawsuits filed related to people of faith’s support for migrants,” said Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights and Religion Project at Union Theological Seminary.

Faith groups have achieved several “promising” wins, she said, adding that ongoing litigation shows how unpopular the administration’s aggressive enforcement approach is with many religious people.

Both Minnesota court cases center on the idea of protecting a sacred space and people’s right to worship — in one case from government intrusion and in the other, from people protesting the immigration crackdown.

In mid-August, court documents emerged in a separate case involving 15 people charged by federal prosecutors with impeding the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. The documents revealed that federal agents had conducted an undercover surveillance operation, which had targeted groups leading protests earlier this year.

Among those charged was an organizer in a martial arts group who the government says was training protesters to physically prevent arrests. Some of the group’s meetings occurred in the gym of University Baptist Church in Minneapolis, and Homeland Security agents conducted surveillance operations there four times — including once with an undercover agent inside, according to court documents.

The church is a member of American Baptist Churches USA and the Alliance of Baptists, two of several groups that in February won an injunction against most immigration enforcement at their member churches nationwide.

The groups have asked the same federal judge to rule that Homeland Security violated that order, to instruct its agents about it, as well as to disclose if any other houses of worship were part of surveillance operations.

The government says in court documents that its operation didn’t violate the injunction because it wasn’t about immigration enforcement. Rather, they were investigating a suspect for training “individuals to commit acts of violence against federal officers and employees.”

A hearing was held Sept. 4 and a ruling is pending. A spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security said it doesn’t comment “on the existence or status of specific ongoing investigations, nor on investigative methods.”

University Baptist Church’s interim pastor said the small congregation found the surveillance “very upsetting” — but also motivation to double down on their advocacy.

“We see the message of Jesus as compelling us to be where people are most vulnerable,” the Rev. Cody J. Sanders said.

For Kevin Friedl, an attorney with the Democracy Forward Foundation that’s representing the faith groups, the case is ultimately about offering sanctuary.

“For many, religion — being able to join together with others at their church or other house of worship — is an important and critical source of solace and comfort, in hard times, which these are,” he said. “This administration wants to deny them that.”

The argument that churches are protected spaces and worshippers have rights against intrusion is also buttressing the case over the anti-immigration enforcement protest at Cities Church in Minnesota’s capital in January.

More than three dozen people — including former CNN journalist Don Lemon and prominent local activists — are facing federal civil rights charges after entering the Southern Baptist church where one pastor was also a leader in the local ICE field office.

During Sunday worship, some walked up to the pulpit, others loudly chanted “ICE out” and “Renee Good,” referring to the woman who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

In August, a slew of motions to dismiss the cases were filed and will be heard in late October. Some contend the charges amounted to “selective or vindictive prosecution,” and cite the University Baptist Church surveillance. They argue that the “administration’s claims that this prosecution is based on a desire to protect the right to practice religion is disproved by the extraordinary freedom it has granted ICE to violate the sanctity of churches,” according to court documents.

“They’re using these cases to try to get information on the whole resistance movement,” said Jordan Kushner, an attorney representing several defendants.

An attorney representing Cities Church countered that the issue at play is “an invasion during worship.”

“Nobody has the right to storm a church,” Doug Wardlow said, adding that the protest — and smaller, outdoors ones that continue to occur during worship times — “traumatically impacted the life of the church.”

Faith leaders across the Twin Cities say they’re still dealing with fallout from the surge, whether it’s lingering fear among migrants, tensions over government surveillance, or persistent financial assistance requests.

Many congregants wonder who else was under federal surveillance, said the Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard, senior pastor at Hamline Church in St. Paul. She was briefly detained at an anti-deportations protest at the Minneapolis airport in January.

Several Protestant congregations that were outspoken in their anti-immigration-enforcement stances have increased their security measures.

While many remain committed to their advocacy, it’s taking a toll.

“The general vibe we get from leaders and congregations is just tired — there’s weariness more than anything,” said Nicholas Tangen of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Minneapolis Area Synod.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

A sign denouncing surveillance is seen outside University Baptist Church, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

FILE - Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., on Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis, File)

Signs saying that immigration agents have no right to enter without a warrant are posted on the doors of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell'Orto)

A sign prohibiting federal agents from entering the premises is posted outside University Baptist Church, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

People walk by a sign outside University Baptist Church, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the urging of President Donald Trump, Republicans in eight states redrew the boundaries of dozens of congressional districts over the past year while angling for an edge that could help them hold onto a slim House majority in a tough midterm election.

Ultimately, it didn't work.

Republicans lost most of the Democratic-held seats they had targeted to flip, lost others they had banked on retaining and got swept out of power by a Democratic surge fueled by voter dissatisfaction with Trump, the economy and the war with Iran.

The Republican redistricting plan fell flat in Alabama, Florida and Texas. It got scuttled by courts in Missouri and then firmly defeated by its voters Tuesday. And it got offset in California, where a retaliatory Democratic redistricting flipped all five of the Republican-held seats it targeted.

“This is a catastrophic rebuke of Donald Trump’s failed effort to gerrymander the country into oblivion to save the U.S. House of Representatives for himself," John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said Wednesday.

Congressional voting districts typically are redrawn after a census at the start of each decade to account for population changes. But Trump spurred an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle last year when he urged Texas Republicans to reshape U.S. House districts to give the GOP a shot at winning five additional seats in the midterm election.

A cascade of redistricting followed, spurred along in the South by a Supreme Court ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for majority Black districts. Republicans hoped their redistricting could net as many as four more seats in Florida, two in Ohio and one each in Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee.

In all but one of those revamped districts, Trump would have carried over 54% of the vote had they been in place for the 2024 election, according to Associated Press estimates.

“In normal times, that sort of district is relatively safe,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who runs the “All About Redistricting” website.

But the presumed Republican districts got undercut by shifting viewpoints of Trump. The AP Voter Poll found about 6 in 10 disapprove of how Trump is handling the presidency. Views of Trump’s priorities also were mostly negative.

“If we look across the country, that entire mid-decade redistricting gambit was a complete bust for Republicans,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

In Texas, Republicans reconfigured three heavily Latino districts in the Rio Grande Valley, which had shifted toward Trump in 2024, to try to boost their chances of unseating Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. But both won reelection Tuesday. And Democrats instead unseated Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, whose district is sandwiched between theirs.

Though De La Cruz's new district retained the same percentage of Trump-inclined voters as the 2024 version, about 3 in 5 voting-age residents were new — making it harder for her to compete against Democratic challenger Bobby Pulido, a well-known Latin Grammy award winner.

The AP Voter Poll indicates a substantial shift in Hispanics moving away from Republicans compared with Trump’s victory just two years ago. Nationally about one-third of Hispanics say they backed the Republican in their local U.S. House race, while roughly 4 in 10 voted for Trump two years ago.

The new Texas districts were drawn by Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

“Trying to pick up five seats in Texas, without putting anything else in serious jeopardy, it was a Herculean task,” Kincaid said Wednesday. He added: “It required the trends that we had been seeing over the past several years to continue, and that did not happen.”

Had Republicans not redrawn the Texas districts, however, they likely would have lost even more seats, Kincaid said.

Republicans in Florida tried to tilt four more House seats to the GOP in Trump’s adopted home state. Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz was among their targets, but he decided to run anyway in one of the redrawn districts. He won reelection Tuesday.

“I’ve worked across the aisle. I’ve delivered results for my community, and they spent $26 million trying to beat me,” Moskowitz said after his victory in Florida’s 25th Congressional District. “They lit that money on fire tonight.”

He said voters in his new district, like those nationwide, were most concerned about the economy and their ability to afford a good quality of life. But he said that redistricting angered voters, too.

After redistricting, about two-thirds of voting-age residents were new to the district represented by Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. But she also won reelection. Democrat Pia Dandiya won yet another district -- an open seat in southern Florida — that Republicans had reshaped for an advantage.

In Alabama, a Supreme Court ruling allowed the Republican-led Legislature to revert to what the GOP considered to be a friendlier map. But Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures won reelection anyway, defying Republicans' plans.

Republicans redrew two congressional districts in eastern North Carolina with a goal of unseating Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the 1st Congressional District, which has sent a Black member to Congress for more than 30 years. They made Davis' district a bit more Republican by bringing in thousands of voters from the 3rd Congressional District, held by Republican Rep. Greg Murphy. In exchange, they reassigned thousands of Democratic-leaning areas to Murphy's district.

The ensuing advertising battle for Davis' seat cost well over $50 million, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, ranking among the most expensive House races nationally.

Davis held a slight lead Wednesday, and the race between Murphy and Democratic challenger Raymond Smith was particularly close.

What started as a Republican redistricting effort could become a Democratic redistricting movement ahead of the presidential election.

Maryland voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment that will make it easier for the state's Democratic-led General Assembly to redraw districts to the party's advantage. Democratic proponents, backed by former President Barack Obama, have touted it as a way to “stop Trump.”

Democrats who made gains in numerous state legislatures Tuesday also could use that power for redistricting — most notably in Wisconsin, where districts are tilted toward Republicans. And Democratic lawmakers in New York already have taken an initial step toward congressional redistricting before the 2028 elections.

But the recent midterm redistricting revealed it can be difficult to anticipate voter behavior when trying to gerrymander districts for partisan advantage. That could particularly be the case for the next presidential election, which would be the first in a dozen years without Trump's name atop the ballot, making it hard to know how his supporters would realign behind new candidates.

The midterm election "shows districts aren’t destiny – that if voters actually show up, they can overcome district lines,” Levitt said.

Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.

Santiago Rivera paints on a sign outside a polling place after casting his ballot on Election Day during the midterm election Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Clayton, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., mingles with supporters at an election night event, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)

Democratic House candidate Bobby Pulido arrives at a polling location at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's Student Academic Center on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Edinburg, Texas. (Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via AP)