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FBI SWAT Team Conducts Early Morning Raid on Pro-Life Activist: Report

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


An FBI SWAT team sprang into action during an early morning raid in Pennsylvania on Friday.

Between 25 and 30 agents arrested pro-life activist Mark Houck at his home in Bucks County, his family told the outlet LifeSiteNews.

The activist leads a non-profit organization, The King’s Men, and is involved in providing sidewalk counseling outside abortion clinics in Philadelphia. The report indicated that the arrest stemmed from a case that was dismissed by a federal court in the city but was nevertheless picked up by Joe Biden’s Justice Department, according to the family.

“The kids were all just screaming,” Houck’s wife, Ryan-Marie, told LifeSiteNews. “It was all just very scary and traumatic.”

The outlet noted further:

Ryan-Marie, who is a homeschooling mother, described how the SWAT team of 25 to 30 FBI agents swarmed their property with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. this morning. Having quickly surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, “they started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it.”

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Before opening the door, she explained, her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming,” she said.

When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie described.

When agents burst in, the couple said they instructed their children to stay upstairs. “Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down,” Ryan-Marie said.

Upon inquiring as to why agents were at their home, one of them said they were on-scene to arrest Mark. When his wife asked to see a warrant, “they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not.”

She protested that, saying it was tantamount to kidnapping. “You can’t just come to a person’s house and kidnap them at gunpoint,” she said. At that, an agent retrieved a warrant from a vehicle and presented it.

Agents presented the first page of the warrant and told Ryan-Marie they were taking her husband to “the federal building in downtown Philadelphia.”

“After they had taken Mark, and the kids were all screaming that he was their best friend, the [FBI agents on her porch] kind of softened a bit. I think they realized what was happening. Or maybe they actually looked at the warrant,” Ryan-Marie explained. “They looked pretty ashamed at what had just happened.”

She went on to describe how the incident traumatized the couple’s children, describing them as being “really sad and stressed.”

“So, I’ve already reached out to some psychiatrists or psychologists to try and help us through this. I don’t really know what’s going to come of it when you see guns pointed at your dad and your mom in your house when you first wake up in the morning,” Ryan-Marie said.

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Conservatives responded to the raid on social media by blasting what they see as an increasingly politicized FBI and Justice Department under Biden.

“In case you hadn’t caught on already, the satanic Biden administration is waging war on Christians,” Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles tweeted.

“This is a disgrace and should not be happening in America,” LifeSite co-founder and editor-in-chief John Henry Westen added. “Pray for Mark Houck and his family.”

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“So, a man who does nothing but run an org that teaches men to be strong Catholics and sidewalk counsels outside Planned Parenthoods had 30 armed federal agents sent to his house and is now facing jail time over an incident that resulted in a failed lawsuit,” wrote conservative digital strategist Greg Price on Twitter.

“The FBI has turned into Biden’s secret police force,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) noted. “Sending a small army of heavily armed agents to raid Mark Houck’s home should frighten EVERY American. The FBI using fear & intimidation tactics to go after conservatives needs to END!!”

“The continued weaponization of the FBI and persecution by Joe Biden’s DOJ against ordinary Americans is an outrage,” added Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in a statement. “Citizens across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania join me in expressing our outrage at this early-morning raid executed on a young family.”

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