Ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon, independent reporter arrested over anti-ICE protest at Minnesota church

Update: Lemon was released from custody Friday evening.

Federal law enforcement has arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon over his presence at a protest against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids in Minnesota, during which demonstrators interrupted a church service.

In a message published on social media Friday morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that federal agents acting at her direction had arrested Lemon, independent journalist Georgia Fort and community activists Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy in connection with what she termed the “coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

The arrests represent the administration’s latest attack on the free press and anyone it perceives as standing in the way of its immigration crackdown.

“The First Amendment recognizes the press as holding a distinct and protected role in our democracy. In America, we do not arrest journalists for doing their job,” a group of leading Minnesota news organizations wrote in a message condemning the arrests of Lemon and Fort.

Previously, two federal judges had refused to sign-off on arrest warrants for Lemon, suggesting federal agents had targeted him in a public place.

“I assume they got Lemon in a public place & they don’t need a warrant for that” if they have probable cause, Lee Kovarsky, a law professor at the University of Texas, wrote on social media. 

However, Kovarsky doubted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) actually had probable cause.

“So my educated guess is that Lemon is going to spend as much time detained as [the administration] can get w/o needing to get a judicial determination of probable cause…,” he wrote. “That’s 48 hours. Then they’ll let him go.”

Lemon, Fort, Crews, Lundy and several other people present at the protest were each charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of interfering with religious freedom at a place of worship. 

But the text of the indictment raises serious questions about the charges against Lemon and Fort. It frames regular journalistic practices — like asking questions and broadcasting — as aggressive acts.

The indictment makes it clear that Lemon was livestreaming for an audience and presents him both describing the actions of the demonstrators and the reactions of the congregants. It claims that Lemon and Fort “surrounded” the pastor “in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him,” while Lemon “peppered him with questions” — also known as interviewing.

After the arrests, Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, retweeted a post calling Lemon and the others, who are Black, “todays’ klansmen.”

Dhillon’s commentary on the cases is key, as her division is primarily responsible for handling FACE Act violations.

On Jan. 18, a group of demonstrators interrupted Sunday services at Cities Church in St. Paul after discovering that one of its pastors worked as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) field office in the city.

The protesters were responding to roving immigration raids in the city and the killing of Renee Good, a Minneapolis mother of three, by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.

The killing of Good and another Minnesotan, Alex Pretti, two weeks later has sparked widespread outrage against the administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

The Trump administration has seized upon the disruption at Cities Church to claim that it is defending the rights of Christians and frame critics of its aggressive immigration raids as extremists, a strategy it used against both Good and Pretti.

But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — the parent agency of ICE and Customs and Border Protection — has itself regularly targeted houses of worship, forcing some services provided by Minnesota churches to be canceled or moved online.

Jacob Knutson contributed reporting to this story.