At a community meeting in St. Paul earlier this month, when civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong took the mic, she noted that most people know her from her advocacy work in Minneapolis.
“What most people don’t know is that I actually got started in police accountability and civil rights right here in St. Paul,” she said.
Levy Armstrong, who calls herself a social justice activist and has often been in the news through the years, has been in the spotlight since a protest at a St. Paul church.
Federal authorities arrested her, St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen and social media personality William Scott Kelly on Thursday after a Jan. 18 protest inside a church in St. Paul, and they are federally charged. People protesting at Cities Church on Summit Avenue, near Snelling Avenue, said the acting field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota serves as a pastor at the church.
Protests inside houses of worship are unusual; they more commonly happen outside.
An affidavit from a Homeland Security Investigations special agent about the actions at Cities Church alleges Allen, Levy Armstrong and Kelly “engaged in conduct that … disrupted the religious service and intimidated, harassed, oppressed, and terrorized the parishioners, including young children.”
This is a brief look at the lives of Allen, Levy Armstrong and Kelly.
Chauntyll Allen
Like Levy Armstrong, Allen has long been at the front line of protests and community organizing.
At the meeting earlier this month when Levy Armstrong spoke, Allen was coordinating as people stood to tell city council members about the impacts of federal immigration enforcement and St. Paul police response to an ICE operation at the end of November.
When a teacher asked, “How are we going to protect our children?” Allen said they’re asking people “to show up at the high schools, because we’re planning to surround the schools and protect our children to make sure that they can get in safe and get out safe.” She said she was also taking part.
First elected to the St. Paul school board in 2019 and again in 2023, Allen’s term goes through 2028.
She describes herself as an “educator and youth activist” and says she’s the founder of Black Lives Matter Twin Cities.
Rep. Elliott Engen, R-Lino Lakes, said to Fox News Digital that Allen should be “convicted, prosecuted, taken off the school board, never allowed within 500 yards of a school again. That’d be what sane societies do.”
Allen, 51, was born and raised in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood and graduated from St. Paul’s Central High School. She said last year she was in the process of getting a degree form Metropolitan State University through its individualized studies program, with a focus in African American Studies and psychology.
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She worked for St. Paul Public Schools as a teaching and educational assistant, Community Education program coordinator, Discovery Club teacher and basketball coach for middle and high school.
Last year, Allen ran for St. Paul City Council to represent Ward 4. Molly Coleman was elected.
Allen founded Love First Community Engagement in 2020. She said it includes mentoring high school girls, most of whom have been impacted by the juvenile justice system. Her wife is listed as the executive director on the website.
Allen’s LinkedIn says she’s “Open to work” and lists her experience as the Wayfinder Foundation’s director of criminal justice policy and activism; she was listed in that role in a filing for the nonprofit in 2023. Levy Armstrong was listed as the foundation’s executive director in filings for the nonprofit from 2019 to 2024.
Nekima Levy Armstrong
Nekima Levy Armstrong holds up her fist after speaking at an anti-ICE rally for Martin Luther King Jr., Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in St. Paul. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Levy Armstrong posted on Facebook on Martin Luther King Day Jr. Day, the day after the church protest, a quote from King (changing “he” to “she”): “The ultimate measure of a [wo]man is not where she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where she stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
She appeared on CNN on Friday, after she was released from federal custody, and was asked about the allegations in the federal affidavit.
“Anyone who saw the video (from the church) saw that we were very peaceful,” Levy Armstrong said. “And the description that they gave with regard to churchgoers, that to me sounds like what ICE is actually doing in our community, terrorizing adults and children, making them fearful, disrupting their lives. That’s what ICE is doing. That’s not what we did.”
The Center to Advance Security in America filed a complaint against Levy Armstrong with the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility and wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Protesting is not about disrupting places of worship and traumatizing Christian families. Federal law makes it clear that this type of outrageous conduct is severe and punishable.”
Levy Armstrong, 49, was born in Mississippi and has said the roots of her activism go back to her childhood of living amid the poverty of south-central Los Angeles, where she decided to become a lawyer.
Her future became clearer in 1991 after a friend, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, was shot and killed by a grocer who witnesses said accused the girl of trying to shoplift a bottle of orange juice. It happened shortly after the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, and it upset Levy Armstrong that the shopkeeper got only probation in the killing.
Before Levy Armstrong was president of the Minneapolis NAACP and ran for Minneapolis mayor in 2017, she was an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law from 2003 to 2016. She was director of the law school’s Community Justice Project.
When Jamar Clark was fatally shot by Minneapolis officers in 2015, she became a frequent presence outside a Minneapolis police station when protesters began an “occupation” to protest Clark’s death. When the crowd suddenly decided to block a nearby freeway, she joined them — and got arrested — just days after charges were dismissed against her and other organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of America.
Levy Armstrong is the founder of the Racial Justice Network and Dope Roots; the website says she founded it to “provide customers with alternative ways to consume low-dose, hemp-derived edible THC products.”
William Kelly
Kelly, who regularly posts on social media about his travels around the country to protest ICE and others, arrived in Minnesota in early January. He goes by “DaWokeFarmer” on social media.
William Kelly (Courtesy of the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office)
Kelly, who has described himself as a “combat infantry veteran,” has been traveling as part of what he describes as a “1st Amendment Road Trip.” Since December, he has traveled to Alabama, Louisiana, California, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, according to his social media.
A GoFundMe created by Kelly in November has raised more than $90,000 for expenses for “nationwide travel to defend free speech, funding travel, events and outreach costs.”
On his social media, which includes more than 80,000 followers on TikTok as of Friday, Kelly can be seen protesting against the Trump administration, ICE agents and the deployment of the National Guard to Washington D.C. and taking part in a walk for peace.
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In one Dec. 28 post, Kelly documents protesting outside a church in New Orleans which he claimed faces a lawsuit related to the sexual abuse of children.
Kelly, who said in a video post on Jan. 19 that he had received hundreds of death threats, arrived to Minnesota around Jan. 8, according to his social media.
On Tuesday, Kelly said in a posted video that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem planned to make arrests for “our little protest.”
“And it wasn’t even a protest. Let’s call it what it was. We went into the house of God and preached the words of God,” Kelly said in the video. “But you know, a lot of us are scared. Hell, my wife is terrified for me right now. They’re trying to tie all these protests I’ve done together and label me as some sort of domestic terrorist. Who knows what they’re going to do?”
