Does the pastor at church raided in Minnesota work for ice?

1. What the reporting actually shows: matching names, public appearances and court filings

News organizations from AP and CNN to ABC and Fortune point to the same evidentiary thread: the Cities Church website lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and that name and personal details appear in court filings and public appearances identifying an acting ICE field office director named David Easterwood — including a C-SPAN appearance and filings where Easterwood is named in litigation over ICE tactics ^{[1] [5] [6] [2]}.

2. Where journalists and outlets expressed caution

Several outlets explicitly stopped short of an absolute employment declaration: Fox 9 reported it could confirm a man named David Easterwood is the acting field office director in Minnesota but said it was unable to independently confirm that the acting director is the same David Easterwood listed on the Cities Church leadership page ^[4]; The Mirror noted it remained unclear whether Easterwood was still employed with ICE at the time of reporting ^[7].

3. How activists and critics framed the claim

Organizers and activists who disrupted the service did so because they believed a pastor in the congregation was leading ICE operations in the area; their organizers cited the apparent overlap of name and public-facing roles, and they used Easterwood’s appearance at ICE press events and his defense of ICE tactics in court filings to justify confronting the church ^{[8] [6] [2]}.

4. How officials and institutions reacted

The Justice Department opened an investigation into the disruption of services, and political figures framed the incident in contrasting ways — some defending law enforcement and promising federal prosecution, while activists disputed that prosecuting the demonstrators was a proper response to what they called a pastor’s dual role in enforcement ^{[9] [10] [2] [11]}. The church’s lead pastor criticized the interruption as a violation of worship, even as others called for the congregation to “repent” and remove Easterwood ^{[4] [6]}.

5. What remains unproven by the sources provided

None of the reports supplied a definitive single-source employment confirmation — for example, a contemporaneous personnel statement from ICE or DHS explicitly tying the Cities Church-listed David Easterwood to active employment as the St. Paul acting field office director on the day of the protest — and some outlets flagged that lack of direct confirmation ^{[4] [7]}. Reporting relies on public records, court filings naming a David Easterwood, a church leadership page, and media appearances that strongly suggest the two identities overlap, but those elements stop short of unequivocally documenting active employment status in every outlet’s account ^{[1] [5] [2]}.

6. Bottom line — direct answer to the question

Based on contemporaneous reporting, the pastor named on Cities Church’s website, David Easterwood, appears to be the same David Easterwood publicly identified in court filings and ICE press events as the acting field office director for ICE in the St. Paul region, and multiple outlets characterize him as a local ICE official who also serves as a pastor; however, a few news organizations noted they could not independently verify ICE’s current employment status at the moment of the protest, so the strongest, most accurate statement is that reporting shows a high-probability identification of Easterwood as both a Cities Church pastor and an ICE acting field office director, with limited outlets urging caution due to the absence of a single definitive personnel confirmation in the public record cited by the stories ^{[1] [5] [4] [7]}.