Photo: Independent Journalist Don Lemon, recently arrested in what appears to be politically motivated charges, Wikimedia
If you found yourself in 1933 Germany, would you want to know if the pastor of your church was a member of the Gestapo? Would you want to know if he was active in rounding up Jews, Africans, Communists, Roma people, and members of the LGBTQ community and putting them in concentration camps? What if that information was not available to you and access to that knowledge was made illegal?
Don Lemon’s arrest for covering a protest directed at David Easterwood, a pastor who has ties to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shifts these questions from historical curiosities to contemporary realities. This protest at Cities Church in St. Paul on January 18, 2026, was motivated and inspired by the death of two US citizens—Renée Good and Alex Pretti—at the hands of ICE agents.
Thousands of people have been captured and detained by ICE, and the legal status or even the location of many of these people is unclear. Renée Good and Alex Pretti were part of a community network developed and utilized to protect immigrants and other vulnerable communities from ICE raids and detention. The level of outrage and protest has boiled over since the two separate fatal shootings of these community volunteers, and these death have significantly changed the conditions on the ground as the attendance at protests and the frequency of demonstrations has increased. President Trump announced there would be a reduction of 700 ICE agents assigned to Minneapolis.
These recent events in Minneapolis have increased the negative feelings toward ICE, and their presence is seen more as a foreign invading force. A clear majority of people in Minneapolis want ICE to leave immediately, and many elected officials have demanded that ICE leave. Within this backdrop, having a pastor of a church who is also an official with ICE set the stage for the church service disruption during Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Weekend on Sunday, January 18.
In the spirit of civil disobedience and direct action, community members flooded into Cities Church and stopped the service that day. Independent journalists were with them and covered the action with television crews and powerful visual images and interviews. Charges have not only been brought against those that participated in this action, but also against independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort.
The implications of the arrests of journalists are profound and potentially permanent. Should we have access to knowledge about protests in our country?
If a journalist covers a protest, does it mean that the journalist is part of the protest and supports their cause? Put another way, what if the journalists covering the Civil Rights Movement were considered outside agitators who were there in support of the protest? What if they were arrested alongside Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King and the thousands of other people who participated in those demonstrations? What national narrative would we have about the Civil Rights Movement if we did not have the newspaper articles, the television coverage on the news, and the radio interviews on a daily basis? The press plays a critical role, not just as the foundation for a democratic nation, but also as an equalizer for a deeply divided society. Don Lemon gave us an opportunity to not just see the protest and the church service disrupted, but literally the two sides in dispute: The members of the church and those wishing to highlight and bring attention to the church pastor’s ties to ICE. Instead of speculation and imagination, we have clear documentation based on the journalist interviews of people in the church who felt deeply hurt and ashamed of their service being stopped and those who came in and believed very strongly that the pastor’s ties to ICE were grounds to disrupt this church service.
If Sheriff Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama during the Civil Rights Era, was also a pastor of a church, then would his church have been a legitimate target for people in the Civil Rights Movement? And if Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. decided to occupy a Bull Connor Church, would it matter if the press covered it and how they presented this story to the national audience? These historical links to Nazi Germany and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States provide a critical context to evaluate and understand the current conditions in Minneapolis and the arrest of journalists covering the protest in this city now.
