Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has been arrested for his involvement in a Minnesota church protest opposing US President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign – the latest Justice Department move against a critic of the administration.

Lemon livestreamed a demonstration earlier this month that disrupted a church service in St Paul protesting at the thousands of armed immigration agents Trump has sent this month into Minnesota’s biggest cities.

Federal agents in the surge have frequently clashed with protesters and fatally shot two US citizens, one before and one after the protest that led to Lemon’s arrest.

He is charged with conspiring to deprive others of their civil rights and violating a law that forbids obstructing access to houses of worship, according to a Justice Department official.

FBI and Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested him in Los Angeles, according to his lawyer Abbe Lowell. The move occurred just over a week after a federal magistrate judge declined to issue an arrest warrant for Lemon.

He had been under FBI surveillance for several days leading up to his arrest, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The FBI declined to comment.

“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.

“This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”

The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Three other people, including the independent local journalist Georgia Fort, were also arrested, said Attorney General Pam Bondi.

REPEATED DOJ ACTION AGAINST TRUMP CRITICS :

Outrage over the tumult in and around Minneapolis has sparked a political crisis for Trump, with his Republican Party divided over whether the immigration crackdown had gone too far, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Under Trump, the Justice Department has regularly tried to prosecute a succession of critics and perceived enemies of the president. It unsuccessfully sought to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who both led investigations into Trump.

It has also opened investigations into nine Democratic lawmakers, a former CIA director, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who has resisted Trump’s pressure to rapidly lower interest rates.

Lemon spent 17 years at CNN, becoming one of its most recognizable personalities, and he did not shy from criticizing the government on air. He was fired in 2023 after making on-air comments about women and then-Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley that were widely perceived as sexist. Lemon later apologized.

Trump frequently lambasts journalists and news outlets, going further than his predecessors by sometimes suing them for damages or stripping disfavored outlets of their access-granting press credentials.

Earlier this month, FBI agents with a search warrant seized laptops and other devices from the home of a Washington Post reporter who has extensively covered Trump’s firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, saying it was an investigation into the leaking of secret government information. Source : Reuters