Don Lemon walked into a Minnesota federal courthouse facing the kind of story he used to cover, not anchor, and pleaded not guilty to charges that he helped storm a church during an anti-ICE protest. Outside, demonstrators packed the sidewalk, turning his arraignment into a noisy test of how far the government can go when protests collide with religious services. The former CNN host, now an independent journalist, is treating the case as a referendum on press freedom and protest rights as much as on his own future.
Inside court, the charges were read in the flat language of federal law; beyond the doors, chants and homemade signs told a very different version of events. That clash between narratives is now set to play out in a Minnesota courtroom, with Lemon insisting he was doing his job and prosecutors arguing he crossed a legal line inside a place of worship.
The charges inside the courtroom
Prosecutors have accused Don Lemon of conspiring to deprive others of their civil rights and of violating a federal statute that targets interference with people at a place of religious worship. The government says the protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, which unfolded earlier this year, did not just challenge immigration enforcement but also disrupted congregants in the middle of a service. According to charging documents described in coverage of the case, the demonstration was tied to opposition to ICE enforcement, and prosecutors are leaning on a civil rights law that has also been used against extremist groups that target churches.
Lemon, who appeared in Minnesota federal court earlier this month, entered a not guilty plea and signaled that he intends to fight the case on constitutional grounds. His legal team has already framed the prosecution as an overreach that punishes both protest and newsgathering, arguing that his presence at Cities Church was part of his work as Journalist Don Lemon, not an effort to terrorize worshippers. Nine defendants in total are charged in connection with the same incident, and authorities say the group coordinated to enter the sanctuary and chant “ICE out” during the service, a disruption that federal officials say crossed the line into criminal interference with religious worship.
A protest that began in the pews
The confrontation at the heart of the case started not on the courthouse steps but inside Cities Church, where protesters moved from the margins of the sanctuary into the center of the service. Federal filings describe how nine protesters interrupted the gathering, chanting “ICE out” and calling attention to immigration enforcement practices that they argued were tearing families apart. The event was part of a broader series of anti-ICE demonstrations in Minnesota, where activists have targeted both government buildings and religious spaces they see as moral platforms for their cause. Officials say the church protest was different because it directly interfered with worship, which is why the charges hinge on conduct “at a place of religious worship” rather than on standard disorderly conduct statutes tied to public protests.
Five of the people charged in connection with the church action have already appeared in court, where they joined Lemon in entering not guilty pleas to the federal civil rights counts. Video from the protest, cited in court documents and shared online, shows demonstrators unfurling banners and chanting as congregants look on, with some church members trying to drown out the shouts by singing hymns louder. Federal officials say that moment, when worshippers were forced to choose between leaving or trying to sing over the protest, is what pushed the case into civil rights territory. For prosecutors, the issue is not the message about ICE but the decision to stage it in the middle of a religious service in Minnesota, a choice they argue violated the rights of those who simply came to pray.
Lemon’s defense and the crowd outside
Outside the courthouse in St. Paul, the legal arguments gave way to a street-level show of support that looked more like a rally than a routine arraignment. Supporters who gathered in the cold chanted “Pam Bondi has got to go” and “Protect the press,” turning their anger on the Justice Department official they see as responsible for the case and casting Lemon as a stand-in for reporters under pressure nationwide. Some carried signs that read “Protect the press” in bold marker, echoing the crowd’s chants that press freedom is “the bedrock of our democracy” and linking Lemon’s case to a broader fight over how aggressively the government can police journalists who cover street protests.
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