Former CNN host Don Lemon defended left-wing rioters who disrupted an evangelical church service Sunday believing a pastor was connected to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a livestream broadcast.
Riots in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are occurring as opposition to ICE’s enforcement operations was intensified after an ICE agent ambushed by three illegal immigrants wounded one of them Wednesday. The incident follows another ICE agent fatally shooting Renee Nicole Good during a Jan. 7 “targeted” immigration enforcement operation. Lemon broadcast footage of the protest, including his arrival at Cities Church in Minneapolis, about 40 minutes into a six-and-a-half-hours livestream.
“Everybody has to be willing to sacrifice something to save democracy,” Lemon posted Sunday on TikTok in a caption for a video showing his arrival in Minneapolis.
During the livestream, Lemon described the protest — which disrupted the church service — as protesters chanting “Justice for Renee Good.”
WATCH:
Video recorded on a cell phone by the ICE agent who fired the fatal shots showed Good appearing to ignore commands from other ICE agents to exit her vehicle before she backed up her car and looked at the agent. She then allegedly accelerated towards the agent, after her girlfriend shouted, “Drive, baby, drive!”
Good’s girlfriend is being investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of attempting to impede federal law enforcement.
“You can see the protesters here have gathered over here, they’re in the middle of the church,” Lemon said at one point. “In the beginning of the service, the pastor was speaking, and [a protester] came up and said her piece, and then the protesters surrounded her. This is a clandestine mission, I think they found out one of, according to them … that one of the pastors here is a member of ICE, so here we go.”
The former CNN host defended the disruption of the service by anti-ICE rioters, claiming they were acting in a manner similar to civil rights protesters.
“This is the beginning of what’s going to happen here. When you violate people’s due process, when you pull people off the street, you start dragging them and hurting them, and not abiding by the constitution, you start doing all of that, people get upset and angry,” Lemon said. “Remember what the civil rights movement was about. The civil rights movement was about these very kinds of protests.”
Lemon claimed people had no right to object to protests like the one in the church, saying during his narration of the protest the Constitution allowed for protests at any time.
“The whole point of it is to disrupt and make people uncomfortable,” the former CNN host claimed.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon announced in a Sunday post on X that the Justice Department launched a probe into the incident, tagging Attorney General Pam Bondi, who later announced she spoke with the church’s pastor.
I just spoke to the Pastor in Minnesota whose church was targeted. Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law.
If state leaders refuse to act responsibly to prevent lawlessness, this Department of Justice…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 19, 2026
“There is no low these radical leftists won’t stoop to,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Jacob Frey and Tim Walz have whipped these rioters into a frenzy and turned them loose to wreak havoc on Minneapolis. Frey & Walz should be ashamed for inciting such chaos, but the Trump Administration will continue enforcing the law.”
Left-wing rioters targeted attendees of a Saturday counter protest supporting ICE’s enforcement operations in Minneapolis led by internet provocateur Jake Lang. Lang and at least one other attendee observed the rioters, before Lang was apparently stabbed but avoided injury due to his wearing body armor. Lang later posted he was in the hospital, being treated for a head injury.
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