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A Minnesota State Representative sounded off on the state’s public schools after a member of the St. Paul Board of Education and prominent Black Lives Matter activist was arrested for storming a local church last week to confront a pastor who is also an ICE agent.
“Most of the school boards in the Twin Cities metro area, Ramsey and Hennepin County in particular, have become nothing other than activist boards,” State Rep. Elliott Engen, R-Lino Lakes, told Fox News Digital. “They’re no longer about serving the school, making sure that the budget is balanced, kids are served that the education gap is closed, because we have the largest in the nation.”
Chauntyll Allen was one of three people taken into federal custody Thursday after an aggressive anti-ICE mob, many members of which filmed the incident, stormed Cities Church in Saint Paul on Sunday, Jan. 18. Allen is the clerk of the education board, which is an elected position. She has held office since 2020.
Chauntyll Allen, leader of Black Lives Matter Twin Cities, speaks about the death of Ricky Cobb II outside the Governor’s Mansion in St. Paul, Minn., where families and community members advocated for the release of Minnesota State Patrol video of the death of Ricky Cobb II in St. Paul, Minn. on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. Ricky Cobb II died of multiple gunshot wounds during a traffic stop on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis. (Angelina Katsanis/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
She was charged with conspiracy to deprive others of their constitutional rights.
“So they really have made a, a very blatant, obvious and charged, decision to engage in political activism,” Engen said.
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“It’s LGBTQ [and] that sort of thing, and activism through the [Minnesota Department of Education],” he continued. “So much so that, you know, even in our state curriculum standards now, we have comprehensive sex education, which is mandated from third and 12th grade. You have ethnic studies, which is the equivalent of [critical race theory], which is mandated in K-3 and above. You have queer theory and queer studies, which are now being mandated in high school. It is a constant push towards more ideological persuasions and activism.”
He described Allen as an activist who has been engaged in Twin Cities politics for quite some time. Asked what should happen now that Allen has been arrested, Engen answered bluntly.
“Convicted, prosecuted, taken off the school board, never allowed within 500 yards of a school again,” he said. “That’d be what sane societies do.”
However, he’s not confident that will happen.
“But instead, Minnesota’s probably going to — under the current administration, under the current governance and leadership — prop her up as some hero, somebody to emulate, when in reality these people only know destruction,” he said.
Engen later added that he is sick of adults making school boards about themselves and their political activism, instead of serving students.
After the incident, Allen doubled down on the mob invasion in an interview with TMZ earlier this week, saying it “needed to be done to get the message across.”
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She said she and the dozens of other agitators, who wreaked havoc inside the place of worship while former CNN host Don Lemon and others filmed the event, found out that a pastor at the church was an ICE agent through a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
“For us that’s just like, the lowest bar,” she said in the interview. “It’s like, you know, you have these people in our community just terrorizing. Terrorizing our children and our women and our different immigrant communities. They’re arresting U.S. citizens and doing all this illegal stuff and all the way down to even the most graphic murder of Renee Good. And then we have the head of this whole operation standing in a pulpit preaching to a congregation every Sunday morning, and so that was really just not OK with us.”
Chauntyll Allen, a community activist, talks on the stage at The Commons park in front of U.S. Bank Stadium one year after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2021. (Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Panicked churchgoers can be seen in the viral videos fleeing the church as the activists scream at and taunt others.
Allen said her mother is a pastor, and justified the event by saying that in the Bible, Jesus flipped tables.
The school board member, who has served since January 2020, is described as a “youth advocate and educator” on her biography page. That page also lists her as a member of the board’s African American Program Work Group and Equity Committee.
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Allen took to the streets during the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020.
Lemon snagged an interview with the pastor during the chaos, in which he also attempted to lecture the man on Christianity. The pastor asked him to leave.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers question a man about his status on Lake Street near Karmel Mall in Minnesota on Dec. 10, 2025. (Christopher Juhn/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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“The district has been made aware of this incident and is following all applicable policies and procedures,” a spokesperson for the district told Fox News Digital. “Saint Paul Public Schools does not comment on pending legal matters.”
The directors of the Saint Paul Board of Education did not return requests for comment.
Allen did not return multiple requests for comment.