Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested Thursday night on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota, church, his attorney said.
Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards, attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement.
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell wrote. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
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Lemon is one of multiple people arrested over a protest at Cities Church, where an ICE official is believed to be one of the pastors. The protesters interrupted a service earlier this month to call for an end to the immigration surge in the state.
Three people were arrested last week over the protest: former president of the Minneapolis NAACP Nekima Levy Armstrong, William Kelly and Chauntyll Louisa Allen. They were charged under a law that makes it illegal to conspire to violate others’ rights.
Lemon videoed the protesters and has said he was there as a journalist and had no affiliation with the group that organized the action. He was in Minnesota for an episode of his YouTube show on the city’s protests against the immigration enforcement operation.
The Justice Department said that Lemon did not have a right to be on the church’s property and that interrupting a church service may hinder the congregants’ constitutional rights to religious expression.
A top Department of Justice official put Lemon “on notice” last week for his presence at the protest.
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service,” wrote Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for civil rights, on X.
Neither she nor Attorney General Pam Bondi has publicly commented on the arrest. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration sought to charge eight people involved in the incident, including Lemon, but was initially only successful in having charges approved for three by a judge. A federal magistrate judge previously declined to approve charges against Lemon and four others, saying the evidence was insufficient.
Lemon is expected to appear in a federal court in Los Angeles on Friday.
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