Former CNN host Don Lemon reacted to criticism Tuesday after being put “on notice” by the Department of Justice civil rights chief over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a church in Minnesota.“Whatever they do, let them do it, but in the end, I’m telling you, I don’t think that they’ve realized that people are fed up with this,” Lemon, now an independent journalist, said in an interview with podcaster Jennifer Welch. ”That’s why you see so many people out in the streets. That’s why those protesters went into the church.”Protesters disrupted a Sunday morning service at Cities Church in St. Paul, and alleged the church’s pastor, David Easterwood, was the same David Easterwood who is a top ICE official in the state, CNN reported. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN that it “will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,” pressed about the pastor’s connection with ICE. It was not immediately clear if Easterwood was at the service when the protest took place. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced Sunday night that the DOJ will pursue charges against the protesters. She also called Lemon’s coverage of the protest “pseudo journalism” and said he was “on notice.” A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice! https://t.co/5QASu6N4OE— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) January 19, 2026Dhillon doubled down on her threats of criminal charges during an interview with conservative influencer Benny Johnson, warning that “everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.”She said Lemon being a journalist was not a “shield” to what she called “being a part, an embedded part, of a criminal conspiracy,” and floated the possibility of invoking the Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The legislation prohibits groups of people from conspiring with one another with the intention of violating citizens’ constitutional rights.“None of what she says there applies to me. There’s no evidence,” Lemon told Welch. “I have no affiliation with the organization. I have no planning of any of this. I am a journalist reporting.”During the protest, Lemon interviewed a pastor who called the disruption of the service “shameful.”In his interview with Welch, the former CNN host criticized churchgoers who “felt that they were traumatized” by the protest. He argued there should be ”a bit of self-reflection” on their part as ICE conducts massive operations that put lives in jeopardy and detains migrants in reportedly inhumane conditions. “Especially if you’re in a church and you’re supposed to be about helping the least of these, that should be at the top of mind, rather than ‘I was inconvenienced today’ and, you know, ‘My kids are going to be upset because they happened to witness how America and the Constitution works,’” Lemon said.President Donald Trump slammed the protest on Truth Social Tuesday morning, referring to the incident as a “church raid” and labeling the demonstrators, “agitators and insurrectionists.” “These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act. They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing,” Trump wrote. “They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”Billionaire Elon Musk amplified calls for Lemon’s arrest, stating on X, “Crime is crime. He committed a crime, so he should pay the price.”In an email to NBC News, Lemon said, “It’s notable that I’ve been cast as the face of a protest I was covering as a journalist — especially since I wasn’t the only reporter there.”“That framing is telling,” he added. “What’s even more telling is the barrage of violent threats, along with homophobic and racist slurs, directed at me online by MAGA supporters and amplified by parts of the right-wing press.”He continued, “If this much time and energy is going to be spent manufacturing outrage, it would be far better used investigating the tragic death of Renee Nicole Good — the very issue that brought people into the streets in the first place.”