Former CNN host Don Lemon, who is now an independent journalist, was arrested on Thursday over his connection to a protest that occurred inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month. The protest was held by demonstrators who alleged that a pastor at the church is the acting field director for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in the city.
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 30, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Journalist Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal law enforcement agents on Friday morning in Los Angeles, the latest escalation against the free press by the Justice Department under the control of President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, both of whom have repeatedly targeted journalists for doing their jobs.
The former CNN anchor had been accused of misconduct by Trump following his coverage of an anti-ICE protest that took place inside a Minneapolis church on Jan. 18. While organizers and participants of that protest—aimed at the pastor of the congregation who is also a federal immigration enforcement official—chanted and disrupted the service, Lemon later interviewed the pastor and covered the events as they took place.
According to the Associated Press:
Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles, where had been covering the Grammy Awards, his attorney Abbe Lowell said.
It is unclear what charge or charges Lemon is facing in the Jan. 18 protest. The arrest came after a magistrate judge last week rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge the journalist.
Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, has said he has no affiliation to the organization that went into the church and that he was there as a journalist chronicling protesters.
Fellow journalists and free-press advocates swiftly came to Lemon’s defense and condemned the Trump DOJ over the arrest.
“Reporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public. This arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.” —Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
“They arrested Don Lemon. This is horrifying,” said Jemele Hill,
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