Federal authorities have arrested additional individuals in connection with a Jan. 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, intensifying a case that has increasingly raised concerns over immigration enforcement, protest rights, and press freedom.
Those arrested include independent journalist Georgia Fort, Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Trahern Crews, and Minnesota Senate District 65 candidate Jamael Lundy, according to a statement shared on social media by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The arrests stem from a protest in which activists entered the church during a worship service to draw attention to allegations that one of its pastors also serves as a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Demonstrators said the action was intended to highlight the impact of intensified immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities.
Fort was arrested early Friday morning at her home in Minnesota. Prior to being taken into custody, she livestreamed federal agents at her door, stating that her arrest was tied to her role documenting the protest as a journalist.
“As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago and now I’m being arrested for that,” Fort said in the video. “It’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution when you can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”
Crews, a longtime organizer and former candidate for both St. Paul mayor and the Minnesota House of Representatives, was also taken into custody. Lundy, an attorney with Hennepin County and a current Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate for the Minnesota Senate, was arrested in connection with the same incident. Authorities have not publicly detailed the specific charges facing the three.
Civil rights attorney and racial justice advocate Nekima Levy Armstrong was arrested last week for her role in the protest. Speaking at a press conference Thursday evening, Levy Armstrong described her arrest as “political retaliation.”
“This is not only an immigration fight,” she said. “This is a fight for police accountability, racial justice, and our constitutional rights.”
The recent arrests follow the detention of journalist Don Lemon, who was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles while on assignment. Lemon has said he was present at the church protest solely in a journalistic capacity and did not participate in organizing or disrupting the service. A federal magistrate judge had previously declined to approve charges against Lemon and several others, citing a lack of evidence of criminal conduct.
Lemon’s former employer, CNN, issued a statement condemning the arrests and warning of their implications for press freedom.
“The First Amendment protects journalists who bear witness to news events as they unfold,” the statement read. “Attempts to violate those rights raise profoundly concerning questions about press freedom.”
The Department of Justice has not released full charging documents related to the most recent arrests, and requests for comment were not immediately returned.
As legal proceedings continue, the case has become a focal point for broader debates surrounding immigration enforcement, protest activity, and the limits of government authority over journalists and political organizers.
Why This Case Should Worry Everyone
What is unfolding in Minnesota is no longer about a single protest or a single journalist.
When courts decline to approve charges, yet federal authorities continue to escalate arrests — sweeping in journalists, civil rights attorneys, and political candidates — the issue shifts from public order to political pressure. The pattern is hard to ignore.
Georgia Fort did not organize the protest. Don Lemon did not disrupt the service. Their shared action was documentation. Treating journalism as criminal conduct is not accountability — it is deterrence. And when activists and candidates are arrested alongside reporters, the signal is even clearer: participation, visibility, and dissent come at a cost.
Press freedom does not vanish overnight. It erodes when the act of witnessing becomes grounds for arrest and when legal thresholds are replaced by persistence and power. This case tests whether constitutional protections apply only when reporting is comfortable — or whether they still matter when journalism exposes inconvenient truths.
This is not just an immigration story. It is a test of how fragile civil liberties become when political authority decides scrutiny itself is the threat.
And history shows that once that line is crossed, it rarely stops at one church, one protest, or one journalist.