https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/16/minnesota-journalist-charged-ice-protest

After Georgia Fort and Don Lemon reported from a church whose pastor reportedly works for ICE, agents arrested Fort in front of her children

When federal agents arrived at Georgia Fort’s front door to arrest her, she knew what to do: be a journalist.

Fort, an independent Minnesota reporter who faces criminal charges after covering a protest inside a St Paul church, took out her phone and spoke directly to the camera, livestreaming to her audience that her lawyer advised her to go with the agents. Her three kids were in the house at the time, she said.

“I’m going to have to hop off here and surrender to agents,” she said in the video on 30 January. “As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago, and now I’m being arrested for that. It’s hard to understand how we have a constitution, constitutional rights, when you can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”

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During the height of “Operation Metro Surge” in January, days after a federal agent killed Renee Good, dozens of people entered the church to call attention to one of its pastors, who reportedly served as an acting field director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nearly 40 people have been charged over the protest in a sprawling case that pits the first amendment rights to protest and report against the free exercise of religion. The Trump administration has made clear that the case is a high priority. Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice, has said the government is “going to pursue this to the ends of the earth”, which the government said in legal filings was not a political statement but “mere promises to vigorously enforce federal criminal law”.

…

Fort often highlights attacks on journalists in her coverage, and she brings up the sustained attack on press freedom globally as context for her arrest. She points to journalists like Mario Guevara, a Latino journalist in Georgia who was deported by the Trump administration, and the hundreds of journalists killed in Gaza.

These attacks on journalists aren’t just personal – they are an attack on the public’s right to know, she said.

“Why would anybody not want you to know truth and facts?” she said. “Why would someone want to arrest and criminalize the people whose job it is to simply keep you informed?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/16/minnesota-journalist-charged-ice-protest