Former CNN host Don Lemon has been arrested after he entered a Minnesota church and filmed anti-immigration enforcement protesters as they disrupted a service.
Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents on Thursday night while in Los Angeles covering the Grammy Awards, according to a statement from his lawyer Abbe Lowell.
“Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court,” the attorney said.
Lemon went into the Cities Church in St Paul on 19 January with a group of protesters who said one of the pastors was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official.
“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 said in a statement posted to Lemon’s Instagram account on Friday.
The lawyer added: “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”
In his own defence, Lemon said in a recent video: “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it.”
President Donald Trump’s administration initially sought to charge eight people involved in the Minnesota church protest, citing a law that protects people in places of worship.
But a magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence presented by the justice department approved charges for only three of those involved, excluding Lemon.
The government then sought to challenge that decision, but was turned away by an appeals court.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi criticised the protests during a previous visit to Minneapolis, saying in a Fox News interview that the scene was “horrific”.
“We’re going to pursue this to the ends of the Earth,” Harmeet Dhillon, from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, said during an interview with podcaster Megyn Kelly on Friday.
The protests were part of ongoing unrest in Minnesota, where an operation by federal immigration agents has sparked confrontations that have left two US citizens dead.
Jim Acosta, Lemon’s former CNN colleague, wrote on social media in response to the arrest: “This is outrageous and cannot stand. The First Amendment is under attack in America!”
By BBC News
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