White House Generates Racist AI Image After 'Politically Motivated' Arrest of Activists Over Church Protest

Minneapolis, MN — Last Thursday, 48 hours before federal agents killed the second person in Minneapolis this year, three activists in the Twin Cities were arrested for protesting a church where the leader of the local ICE office is also a pastor. Civil rights attorney and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul School Board member Chauntyll Allen, and veteran-activist William ‘DaWokeFarmer’ Kelly were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy against the rights of others, Title 18, Section 241 [18 U.S.C. § 241], a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. [UPDATE Jan. 30: Independent Journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon Arrested by Feds Along With Three More Activists]

After the arrest of Levy Armstrong, the White House posted an AI-manipulated image of Nekima crying as she stood handcuffed next to federal agents — she never cried and a video recorded of her arrest published the next day showed her calm and dignified as she was taken into custody.

The White House also darkened her skin in the image, a practice long used by the U.S. government and corporate media to foster and reinforce bias and prejudice and play on systemic anti-Blackness. The post falls in line with a long history of white supremacist messaging and meme posting from the Trump administration.

Additionally, heavily-dramatized language was plastered on the image reading “ARRESTED – FAR-LEFT AGITATOR NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG FOR ORCHESTRATING CHURCH RIOTS IN MINNESOTA.” The official White House logo adorned the bottom of the altered image under text. This was preceded by several days worth of media propaganda blasting the church protest as a riot.

“It just shows the racism and fascism in this administration, that they’re willing to literally invent reality,” said Levy Armstrong’s attorney Jordan Kushner.

“This is a political persecution,” said Kushner. “The government has initiated this political prosecution to intimidate any political opponents of the Trump regime’s oppressive and harmful actions rather than to protect religious worship or the community.”

The arrested trio was among two dozen people who caravanned to Cities Church in Saint Paul on Jan. 18 to protest an ICE field office director who is a pastor at the church, David Easterwood. Levy Armstrong, an ordained minister, led the group in asking for a statement from the church about Easterwood overseeing ICE operations and “to initiate a debate about religious values,” according to a motion filed by defense attorneys for Levy Armstrong and Allen.

“How dare you claim to be a pastor of God and you are involved in evil in our community?”
Nekima Levy Armstrong

The protest was documented by independent journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon. Their videos went viral and drew the ire of conservative Christian America. Cities Church is a Southern Baptist church — a denomination rooted in the pro-slavery foundations of this country. A founding pastor of Cities Church, Joe Rigney, is now pastor at Christ Church DC, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends.

Leaders in the federal government immediately went to the media claiming they were pursuing charges against those involved, including Don Lemon for documenting the action.

Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Chief Harmeet Dhillon said in an interview with a right-wing influencer that Lemon should be given criminal conspiracy charges for covering the protest. “He went into the facility,” said Dhillon, “and then he began — quote, unquote — ‘committing journalism,’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part, of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”

Dhillon, along with Robert Keenan and Orlando Sonza from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division are the prosecuting attorneys.

“This was brought from Washington, D.C. by the people at the top of the government solely for political reasons. This case is being handled by prosecutors that they brought in from Washington, D.C. because it’s a political case,” said Kushner on Jan. 22 at the federal courthouse in Saint Paul.

The charging complaint was written by Tim Gerber, a special agent who’s only been employed by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) since March 2025.

The arrest warrants submitted to Judge Douglas Micko featured two felony charges claiming those involved had violated others’ constitutional civil rights, specifically 18 U.S.C. section 241 conspiracy against rights and section 248(a)(2) obstructing freedom of access by force or threat.

The second charge — the Clinton-era FACE Act protects abortion facilities as well as accessibility of houses of worship and pro-life clinics — was crossed out by the judge who wrote “no probable cause” on the warrant and signed his initials.

The idea behind the first charge, 18 U.S. Code § 241, came in 1870 to help protect newly freed slaves and became known as part of the Enforcement Acts or the Ku Klux Klan Acts.

Trump’s government weaponizing this law against these three activists comes less than three years after a federal grand jury indicted Donald Trump on this same charge — and three additional felonies — for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump faced at least 91 felonies and was found guilty of 34 felonies in New York and given no sentence — most other charges were dropped after he was allowed to run for President and win.

The criminal complaint for the three activists noted that “a group of approximately 30-40 agitators, working together in a coordinated manner” went to the church and “disrupted the religious service and intimidated, harassed, oppressed, and terrorized the parishioners, including young children, and caused the service to be cut short and forced parishioners to flee the church out of a side door, which resulted in one female victim falling and suffering an injury.”

After getting the warrants signed, the government surveilled Nekima Levy Armstrong and followed and tracked her car and her cell phone location. After she booked rooms at a downtown hotel, agents from HSI “secured adjacent rooms to conduct surveillance.”

Likewise, agents surveilled Chauntyll Allen’s home and after seeing Allen and her wife leave their residence with duffel bags, they “lost visual contact with the original vehicle and had unintentionally followed a similar-looking vehicle,” according to that same motion.

Because of the days of frivolous public statements made by the DOJ and other government leaders, those involved in the church protest had been readying for arrest and fearing the traumatizing moment where federal agents storm their house and break down their doors with weapons drawn.

As federal agents were stalking Allen and Levy Armstrong, paranoid that they were attempting to leave town, Nekima and others gathered at the hotel with their legal teams who made calls in attempts to turn themselves in.

Despite the efforts, federal authorities didn’t allow them to turn themselves in, said Kushner. It was about optics to them.

Stalking the hallway of the hotel in the early morning, federal agents tackled Chauntyll’s wife, mistaking her for Nekima, and brought her to the Whipple Federal Building before she was released without charges. Federal agents reportedly gave her a concussion during the violent detainment.

A couple hours later, agents from the FBI and HSI made the arrest of Nekima in the hallway of the hotel. One of them filmed with his personal phone while two agents took her down the elevator, through the lobby and into the backseat of a truck. Chauntyll was with Nekima during the arrest but was not targeted. She was arrested not long after.

At least eight people were initially listed on the court records as defendants — all without charges specified. Journalists and members of the public learned of the eight people named before the cases were sealed. After the arrests of the three activists, the other five people initially listed had their names redacted in the criminal complaint.

Two members of the press, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, were among the five redacted names. Both were noted in the complaint by the rookie federal investigator as “agitators” and not press. Press in Minnesota are protected under the Shield Law, a protection which Unicorn Riot further cemented in the state’s Appeals Court in 2024 and Supreme Court in 2025 in a case brought by Energy Transfer for UR’s coverage of resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. However, any federal charges would supersede the state.

Levy Armstrong and Allen’s court hearing took place the same day they were arrested, Jan. 22. They were ordered to be released on their own recognizance but were held overnight after U.S. attorney’s filed a motion to keep the duo detained and the federal courthouse closed early. Nekima and Chauntyll were sent from the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in downtown Saint Paul to Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, which holds federal inmates along with ICE detainees.

On Friday, Jan. 23 Judge Laura Provinzino denied the prosecutors motion to hold Nekima and Chauntyll and ordered their release and that they surrender their passport — which they did.

After the ruling, Racial Justice Network (RJN) — which Levy Armstrong founded — posted a 7-minute video dispelling the government’s racist doctored image.

“This case underscores a disturbing national pattern: the criminalization of dissent, the targeting of Black activists, and the weaponization of federal agencies to suppress movements for justice,” wrote RJN in a statement released last Friday.

Of her arrest, Levy-Armstrong stated, “I surrendered myself peacefully, deliberately, and with intention. I demanded dignity, humanity, and respect, not just for myself, but for every person who has ever been brutalized, silenced, or disappeared by unchecked government power. We stood in protest because families are being torn apart, communities terrorized, and constitutional rights trampled. And we will not be intimidated into silence.”

A short time later on Friday, Allen and Levy Armstrong were released from custody.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Georgia Fort (@bygeorgiafort)

Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota Patrick Schiltz — a George W. Bush appointee — submitted a letter to Judge Steven Colloton, the Chief Judge of the 8th District Court of Appeals that same day, calling the government’s efforts to arrest the other five protesters “frivolous” and scrutinizing some of the “unprecedented” asks the U.S. Attorney was making.

26-1135-Schlitz-Denial-of-Charges

On Monday, Jan. 26, the United States withdrew its request that Judge Schiltz consider the application for the five arrest warrants. No more arrests are expected in the case at this point. UPDATE Jan. 30: A federal grand jury convened on Thursday and indicted four of the other five people: Georgia Fort, Don Lemon, Trahern Crews and Jamael Lundy. They were all arrested and released after processing. See full story.

On the same day, the defense filed a motion to have Nekima’s mobile phone returned and her warrant quashed.

In the motion, Kushner says that Nekima’s phone was in Chauntyll’s possession when she was arrested but before they knew that, federal agents “stopped the vehicle of an attorney on the scene of the arrest as she was driving from the scene and threatened her with arrest based on their belief that she might have” Levy Armstrong’s phone. They also called Kushner and demanded he hand it over before subsequently telling him that they actually have it.

“The dim prospects that the phone may contain any material evidence of a crime are far outweighed in this case by the violations of her privacy and constitutional rights,” wrote Kushner, “and the rights of her clients and associates which will result from the unrestricted examination and/or extraction of her phone.”

Kushner called the case “part of the government’s legal cutting edge of its fascist offensive against the American people” and one that’s obviously politically motivated. He called out the top echelons of the government for “altering [Nekima’s] physical appearance to defame her” and their “deliberate effort to weaponize the court system against citizens exercising their constitutional rights to oppose this fascist regime.”

“It is necessary for the Court to also consider that this case and the implications of the cell phone search are extraordinary because they are the result of an openly politically motivated prosecution ordered by political officials from the top levels of government who are openly using this case for political purposes, as evidenced by the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Whitehouse posting photos of Ms. Levy Armstrong’s arrest on Twitter and even digitally altering her physical appearance to defame her. This case is also part of the government’s legal cutting edge of its fascist offensive against the American people which currently includes an ongoing militarized federal occupation of our community which entails brutal abuses of the population up to and including murder of citizens who engage in peaceful protests. The government offensive further includes a deliberate effort to weaponize the court system against citizens exercising their constitutional rights to oppose this fascist regime.”
Jordan Kushner

The government must respond to Kushner’s latest filing no later than Feb. 2.

Levy Armstrong appeared on Democracy Now! on Monday. She called what the federal government is doing in Minnesota, “despicable,” “unconstitutional,” and “diabolical.”

“I’m being criminalized for helping to lead a non-violent peaceful demonstration inside of a church in which David Easterwood serves as a pastor, but also serves as the overseer for ICE agents in Minnesota. He is the very person who was cited in a lawsuit that was in front of Judge Mendez where he was justifying the conduct of ICE agents, claiming they were not behaving unconstitutionally and also blaming protesters, claiming that protesters are the aggressors.”
Nekima Levy Armstrong

William Kelly was separately arrested Thursday afternoon and released Friday.

There is not a next scheduled court date for the trio as of Thursday, Jan. 29.

A week after their arrest, all three spoke to press next to Target Boycott banner in the Hennepin County Government Center, on the one year anniversary of the start of the Target Boycott. Defense attorney Jordan Kushner also spoke. Kelly shared additional information that a day after being released from custody federal agents broke down his neighbors door with guns drawn seeking Kelly’s cell phone — he was at his house next door.

See the live stream of the press conference by independent journalist KingDemetrius Pendleton below.