Former CNN anchor and independent journalist Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents Thursday night in Los Angeles in connection with a January protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, his attorney said in a statement, “Don Lemon has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” the statement said. “There is no more important time for people like Don to be doing this work.”
Lemon, 59, was taken into custody while covering the GRAMMY Awards, according to his attorney, Abbe Lowell. FBI and Homeland Security Investigations agents were involved in the arrest, according to CBS. Authorities have not publicly detailed the specific charges against Lemon, but the arrest follows a Jan. 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, that disrupted a worship service. During the demonstration, protesters entered the church and confronted the pastor, whom activists accused of having ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“When you violate people’s due process, when you pull people off the street and you start dragging them and hurting them and not abiding by the Constitution, when you start doing all of that, people get upset and angry,” Lemon said during his livestream. “That’s the whole point of it. It is to disrupt, it’s to make [people] uncomfortable, and that’s what they’re doing, and that’s what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something.”
Georgia Fort, an independent journalist and vice president of the Minnesota NABJ chapter, was another person arrested by federal agents. In a Facebook live video, she shared details of the arrest, stating: “As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago and now I’m being arrested for that,” Fort said in her video message. “It’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when we can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”
According to Carol Leonnig of MS Now, Career DOJ prosecutors in both Minnesota and Los Angeles refused to be involved in charging Don Lemon and the other journalists who covered the Minneapolis church protests. “NABJ is outraged and deeply alarmed by the arrest of veteran journalist Don Lemon by federal agents in Los Angeles while he was working, and by the government’s escalating effort and actions to criminalize and threaten press freedom under the guise of law enforcement,” the NABJ Instagram page shared.
Lemon was present at the protest and livestreamed portions of the scene on his platform. He later stated he was there in a journalistic capacity to document the confrontation and its aftermath. Federal prosecutors had previously explored charges related to the demonstration, raising questions about whether Lemon’s actions constituted newsgathering protected under the First Amendment. In his attorney’s statement, Lowell called the arrest an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment,” saying Lemon’s presence and reporting were constitutionally protected and accusing the Justice Department of diverting attention from other issues.
“Exercising your First Amendment constitutionally ‘protected’ right gets you locked up, exercising your 2nd gets you killed, and actual murder… well, in uniform, gets you nothing,” Jasmine Crockett shared on X. “This IS NOT NORMAL nor OK!”
The case has drawn intense public attention, with high-profile Republican figures, including Nicki Minaj, publicly criticizing Lemon’s role in covering the protest. The arrests come as Minneapolis has become a flashpoint for confrontations between federal immigration agents and protesters following the launch of Operation Metro Surge in December 2025.
The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents sparked national protests and intensified debate over immigration enforcement. “It is not by accident that this administration targeted two independent Black journalists,” Journalist Jemele Hill shared on X.