In 1965, Playboy published the longest interview Martin Luther King Jr. ever gave, conducted over a series of conversations with Alex Haley while King was being repeatedly arrested for civil rights protests. King described how cities used preemptive court injunctions to halt protests before any ruling on their legality—what he called “misuse of the judicial process in order to perpetuate injustice.” Last week, two journalists covering a protest in St. Paul encountered a variation on the theme.

Late last Thursday night, former CNN anchor turned independent journalist Don Lemon was arrested by two dozen agents from the FBI and Homeland Security in the lobby of a Beverly Hills hotel. Hours later, a prominent Twin Cities-based independent journalist named Georgia Fort livestreamed her own arrest on Facebook. Masked federal agents—who appeared to be with the DEA—were at her door, peering through her front windows. “I don’t feel like I have my first amendment right as a member of the press,” Fort said, visibly shaken. “I’ve gotta go. They’re knocking.” The stream ended. 

You don’t have to like Don Lemon or follow Georgia Fort. You also don’t have to trust cable news, or sympathize with the protest. You should care because both arrests serve as warnings to anyone covering contested moments in real time.

The arrests come at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi as part of Operation Metro Surge, the administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities. Since December, DHS has deployed roughly 3,000 armed, masked agents to the region. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has called it an “occupation” and urged residents to document ICE presence across the state. “Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans,” Walz said. Widespread protests have erupted in response to the operation, both in Minneapolis and across the world. In January, federal agents killed two legal observers in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, fueling public outrage and protest. 

On January 18th, Lemon and Fort were both at Cities Church in St. Paul, reporting on a protest through livestreams on their respective Youtube channels. The intention of the protest, according civil rights lawyer and protest leader Nekima Levy-Armstrong, was to call out one of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, who reportedly holds a senior role with ICE locally. In Fort and Lemon’s livestreams, roughly 30 demonstrators can be seen disrupting the church service with chants of ‘ICE Out!’ Some parishioners left, while others stayed to confront protesters or stood in the aisles watching. 

The Department of Homeland Security characterized the protest—which lasted 30 minutes, involved no physical confrontations, and was broadcast on video—as a “coordinated takeover-style attack” and a “church riot.” A week later, several protesters were arrested, including Levy-Armstrong. When prosecutors sought warrants for Lemon and Fort, a federal magistrate judge declined, citing insufficient evidence. The Justice Department appealed and secured indictments anyway. 

The indictment does not recognize Fort and Lemon as members of the press, but as participants in a conspiracy to deprive churchgoers of their rights. They’ve reportedly been charged under a Reconstruction-era statute meant to protect Black people from the Ku Klux Klan’s terror campaigns, and under the FACE Act, a federal law meant to ensure safety for those seeking abortions. 

Lemon and Fort were both released from custody shortly after being taken in and have pledged to fight the charges. Based on the indictment, the evidence against them consists of livestreaming the protest, not revealing its time and location in advance, and attempting to interview participants as events unfolded. In other words, journalism.

As their colleagues in the profession, we could waste our time debating the merits of these allegations point for point. Or we could see these actions as what they are: attempts to make reporters think twice before covering protests. The legal strategy seems blunt: deploy charges that may not stick, but will make other journalists hesitate. The irony, too, is impossible to ignore. A Reconstruction-era statute meant to protect Black people from the Klan is now being used to prosecute Black journalists covering Black-led immigration protests meant to draw attention to the actions of a government rampantly violating constitutional rights, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

Arrest doesn’t need conviction to be effective; it just needs to introduce doubt. The next time there’s a protest, a freelancer with no legal team might reconsider covering. A livestreamer decides it’s not worth the personal risk. Fewer people document what’s really happening. The public loses access to unfiltered information.

“These arrests, under bogus legal theories for obviously constitutionally protected reporting, are clear warning shots aimed at other journalists,” said Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern in a statement on the organization’s website. “The unmistakable message is that journalists must tread cautiously because the government is looking for any way to target them. Fort’s arrest is meant to instill the same fear in local independent journalists as big names like Lemon.”

Consider the Playboy Interview: was Haley, an independent Black journalist, aiding and abetting King, who had just penned the Letter From a Birmingham Jail? 

After she was released on Friday, Fort addressed the media outside the federal courthouse. “As a journalist who has worked in media for more than 17 years, I leave here today with one question: Do we have a constitution or not?”