Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has been arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles, according to an attorney statement posted on Lemon’s social media account Friday morning.
Three others, including another journalist, were also arrested on charges that they violated federal law during a protest last week at a church in St. Paul, Minn., according to the Justice Department. Lemon was taken into custody early Friday while covering the upcoming Grammy awards on Sunday, according to federal officials. The arrests stem from a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, where anti-ICE protesters burst into a church and disrupted the Sunday service. The church was targeted because an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field officer apparently serves as pastor. Demonstrators pumped their fists in the air and chanted “ICE out!” as Lemon and other journalists documented the protest and interviewed congregants in the pews. Some called out the name of Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen who was fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Lemon, 59, is being charged with Conspiracy to Deprive Rights and Violation of the FACE Act and interfering by force of someone’s 1st Amendment rights, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security told The Times. James Blair, a deputy White House chief of staff, said in an X post Friday that Lemon had been indicted by a federal grand jury.