Don Lemon Arrested For Alleged Role In Minnesota Church ICE Protest
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested early Friday morning for his role in the Jan. 18 disruption at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn.
Lemon was among a group of four arrested on Friday.
“At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota,” Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X.
READ: A Lemon Of A News Report Or Just New Journalism?
Lemon calls himself an independent journalist and has more than one million subscribers on YouTube.
Georgia Fort also calls herself an independent journalist with nearly 7,000 followers on YouTube. She is Minneapolis based.
Protests related to the surge of immigration arrests in Minneapolis have happened nearly every day in January in the Twin Cities. Protestor Renee Good was killed Jan. 7 by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents when they say she failed to followed orders and tried to hit an agent with her car.
Many of the chants by disruptors at Cities Church were focused on Good’s death.
In a livestream on his YouTube page, Lemon was with the disruptors in a shopping center parking lot while they made last-minute plans. He then traveled with the group to the church where he broadcast from inside and outside the church building.
During the livestream, he was asked to leave numerous times with one request coming from Cities Church Pastor Jonathan Parnell as Lemon interviewed him immediately following the disruption.
In a statement issued to The Daily Signal, Parnell said, “We are grateful the Department of Justice acted swiftly to protect Cities Church so that we can continue to faithfully live out the church’s mission to worship Jesus and make Him know.”
Lemon’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement, “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”
Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly were arrested Jan. 22 for their roles in the disruption.
Both Allen and Kelly have been charged with conspiracy to deprive rights, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X, based on an 1871 act prohibiting those who would conspire to deny the rights of others.
Lemon also was charged under the same act as well as under the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act, which typically protects access to abortion clinics but includes language that protects the “religious freedom at a place of religious worship” from “threat(s) of force [and] physical obstruction” as well as attempts to injure or intimidate.
In an affidavit filed Jan. 20, Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Timothy Gerber said 30-40 people “disrupted the religious service and intimidated, harassed, oppressed, and terrorized the parishioners, including young children, and caused the service to be cut short and forced parishioners to flee the church out of a side door, which resulted in one female victim falling and suffering an injury.”
“Some of the protestors also physically obstructed some parishioners as they attempted to leave the church and the adjacent parking areas,” Gerber wrote in the report.
Gary Hollingsworth, the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s interim president, said he is thankful “to live in a nation that upholds the freedom of worship.”
“As Southern Baptists, we believe that a free church in a free state is the Christian ideal,” he said.
Hollingsworth stressed this freedom must be protected.
“It’s imperative that churches remain free from disruption so people can continue to worship freely without fear,” he told Baptist Press.
This article has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Brandon Porter serves as Vice President for Communications at the SBC Executive Committee.