Lawyers working for Harmeet Dhillon — whose office has stopped enforcing the FACE Act to protect abortion clinics and used it in the Cities Church case against ICE protestors and journalists — have asked a judge to strike journalist Georgia Fort’s motion to dismiss that indictment on First Amendment grounds.
In a filing not signed by the local SAUSA brought in for the case, Civil Rights Division attorneys complain that, since they’ve indicted 38 people, it’ll take forever if Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko has to review long filings like this.
The “volume, scope, and complexity” of this case reinforces the superfluousness of Defendant’s brief. Doc. 140 (order designating this case as complex). This case has 38 defendants. There are already eight pending motions to dismiss (Docs. 97, 547, 592, 593, 594, 609, 610, 611), and more are forthcoming. See Doc. 547 at 6 n.2. (“The defendants intend to file a separate motion…”). And there likely will be dozens, if not hundreds, of additional pretrial motions. Defendant alone filed three motions to dismiss (Doc. 592-594 and six other motions last week (Doc. 596-601). Allowing Defendant to file such a lengthy brief on a single issue accordingly threatens the parties’ ability to timely and concisely present arguments, needlessly consumes resources that are better devoted to other motions, and undermines the Court’s ability to expeditiously resolve this case.
*“The term ‘brief’—derived from the Latin brevis—meaning short—seems inapt here.” McCurry v. Kenco Logistics Servs., 942 F.3d 783, 791 n.5 (7th Cir. 2019).
These lawyers from DC go on to admit that there’s no local rule prohibiting this, the District case they rely on to claim there should be a limit is from another Circuit entirely, and Micko has not set any limit in his scheduling order.
To be fair, they probably had the same response I had (as someone who is used to Districts that do have strict length limitations) as I read Fort’s motion: “Holy shit this is long!” But it matters that they’re trying to silence Fort’s MTD on First Amendment grounds and not her 48-page MTD for Selective and Vindictive prosecution.
That’s true partly because Harmeet’s flunkies are dismissing as “factual background and procedural history, much of which is already familiar to the parties and the Court” language that actually provides details of the day of the Cities Church protest which prosecutors left out their bid to indict her, such as the interviews she and Don Lemon conducted and the inaction by local cops who were onsite; that takes up around 20 pages. Some of those details, such as a description of how DOJ insisted on trophy arrests of both Fort and Lemon, provide the foundation for her other, cross-referenced arguments. And some of it, such as Fort’s description of how this prosecution is silencing her ongoing reporting, is unique to and a critical part of this argument.
It also matters that Dhillon is trying to limit Fort’s argument about the First Amendment because Fort is actually making four different arguments:
It matters that Dhillon is trying to limit Fort’s argument, especially, because a 5-page section establishes the basis for the four different ways Harmeet Dhillon is exercising content-based discrimination in her enforcement of the FACE Act.
The government is selectively enforcing Sections 241 and 248 to allow expression it favors while punishing speech it openly disfavors. First, the government is enforcing these laws against journalists who covered the protests, but not the parishioners or the Church, both of whom also captured and disseminated footage of the protest. Second, the government routinely allows federal law enforcement agents to interrupt church services and other church functions, and to have those raids covered by journalists, while prosecuting the journalists who covered the protest here. Third, the government is prosecuting journalists for supposedly amplifying the anti-ICE protesters’ message through their news reporting, while using their arrests and prosecution both to suppress that message and, through their own footage, to advance a pro-ICE viewpoint. Finally, the government is enforcing the section of the FACE Act protecting church services while expressly refusing to enforce the section protecting reproductive health facilities (except “crisis pregnancy centers”), or to punish journalists who cover conduct at such facilities.
This includes a long section talking about the number of times ICE has intimidated people who were attending church.
Second, although DHS long had a policy against immigration enforcement at “place[s] of worship” and other sensitive locations, Ex. 27 (citing similar policies dating back to 2011), the government rescinded that limitation on the day of President Trump’s second inauguration, Ex. 28. Since then, ICE has deliberately targeted churches and other houses of worship to conduct immigration raids. According to three DOJ attorneys briefed on the government’s strategy, ICE specifically “plan[ed] to target Spanish-speaking churches across the country.” Ex. 29.
These were not just rumored plans. In June 2025, one Bishop in Los Angeles, California reported that his congregation “experienced at least one case of ICE agents entering a parish property and seizing several people.” Ex. 30.
In Georgia, an individual was attending worship services with his wife and children, when ICE seemingly set off his “immigration GPS ankle monitor.” Ex. 31. When he stepped outside to check on the issue, “ICE officers were waiting to take him into custody” in the middle of observing mass. Id.
The Christian Broadcasting Network reported that, during Operation Charlotte’s Web in North Carolina, ICE arrested a man at his church “during a service project” held “after a Saturday service.” Ex. 32. Video of the raid showed some parishioners fleeing into the nearby woods, others scrambling to get inside the church, one woman openly sobbing, and children huddling together.63
In North Hills, California, ICE arrested a parishioner on the grounds of the North Hills United Methodist Church during a church-sponsored event.64 The pastor of the church reported that the arrest was so “terrorizing”—disrupting its food ministry, childcare services, and after-school programs—that it moved its services fully online going forward as a result.65 As was the case here, journalists were on scene when the raid occurred.66
Meanwhile, here in Minnesota, ICE has staked out churches during Spanish mass hours, which one pastor characterized as “a real interference with our parishioners’ right to worship,” adding that it cut attendance at services “by half.” Ex. 33.
Even assuming that the government could plausibly distinguish between disruptions at houses of worship by ICE agents (which it embraces) and disruptions by protesters (which it seeks to criminalize), it has no basis to treat the journalists covering each type of action differently. In that regard, the government has not charged the individual who recorded and published footage of the North Carolina raid, or the individual(s) who captured and published the North Hills raid, including the reporter who was on scene at the time and covered it. Similarly, as noted above, the government has directed its agents to be “camera-ready,” and invited journalists to “ride along” for some of the agency’s most high-profile raids. See Part II.A, supra. And the government has outfitted agents with body cameras to enable them to capture events from their own perspectives, but now seeks to criminalize journalists for obtaining their independently-captured footage. 67
63 Christian Broad. Network (@ChristianBroadcastingNetwork), Ice Arrest at Church Sparks Outrage in Charlotte, YouTube (Dec. 22, 2025), https://perma.cc/94Z7-24SN.
64 KTLA 5 (@KTLA), Community devastated after congregant arrested during immigration raid on L.A. church grounds, YouTube (Feb. 2, 2026), https://perma.cc/L45B-FHQ4.
65 Id.
66 NBCLA (@NBCLA), Church leaders to denounce ICE raids on property, YouTube (Feb. 2, 2026), https://perma.cc/9NT5-7MGY.
67 Preston Mizell, DHS Secretary Noem stands by body camera requirement for federal agents following Trump comments, Fox News (Feb. 3, 2026), https://perma.cc/A7N4- H7JL (“DHS announced that federal law enforcement officers would be required to wear body cameras.”). [links added]
And in a section pointing out that DOJ refuses to prosecute the FACE Act against abortion extremists, Fort notes that no one ever tried to prosecute journalists covering abortion clinic protests, once again focusing on how Harmeet is criminalizing the coverage of some protests but not others.
Notably, in at least one of the pardoned FACE Act cases, local journalists covered the protest and arrests, including inside the clinics, but were never charged with anything. 69 Again, even if the government could plausibly distinguish between protests at abortion clinics (which it embraces) and protests at churches (which it seeks to criminalize), it has no basis to treat the journalists covering each type of action differently based on the topic and message of the underlying protest.
This filing is more than I expected; I thought it would focus more on the abortion/church discrimination Harmeet has confessed to, though that is a part of it.
But by laying out that Harmeet, whose job it is to protect Civil Rights, has done nothing as ICE has deprived Latinos and other immigrant communities of their right to worship without fear of invasion, Fort makes Harmeet’s inaction a central part of this prosecution.
Among the imagined harms that Harmeet’s flunkies raise about the length of this filing is that other “Defendant[s] will have to read the brief and determine whether he or she wishes to join it in whole or part.” Laid out that way, this motion to strike would, in effect, serve as prior restraint preventing other defendants from reading this 85-page motion and realizing what an important argument it is. Lawyers who have joined Harmeet’s project of encouraging the intimidation of Latino church-goers worry that this case will be about the special protections Harmeet is enforcing for a right wing church led by an ICE goon, but not more mainstream churches around the country that serve Latino and other immigrant populations.
This filing may well convince Judge Micko to ask Fort to cut this down a bit. But if that happens, it will serve to censor Fort’s speech about Harmeet’s own refusal to protect the rights of immigrant communities.
Which may well create another legal fight entirely.
Georgia Fort
Don Lemon
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