Don Lemon says a dozen agents came to arrest him even though he offered to turn himself in

Independent journalist Don Lemon said about a dozen federal agents came to his Los Angeles hotel to arrest him last week, even though his attorney had told authorities he would turn himself in to face federal civil rights charges over his coverage of an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church.

Lemon told ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that sending the agents was a waste of resources because law enforcement wouldn't have had to dispatch agents to follow him if he had been allowed to surrender to authorities.

“I was walking up to the room and I pressed the elevator button, and then all of a sudden, I feel myself being jostled and and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” he said Monday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

He asked the agents who they were and said they identified themselves. Lemon asked to see a warrant and was told they didn't have it. The agents then summoned an FBI agent to come from outside to show Lemon the warrant on a cellphone.

The Department of Justice and FBI didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Kimmel introduced Lemon, his first guest of the night, by saying he “was arrested for committing journalism.”

Lemon’s attorney has said Lemon plans to plead not guilty. He told reporters “I will not be silenced” after he was released in response to a judge's orders.

A grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon, another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, and others on charges of conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshippers during the Jan. 18 protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul, where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor.

Fort, in an interview with MS NOW's Rachel Maddow on Monday, said it was “extremely traumatic” for her family when nearly two dozen agents came to her house to arrest her. She has three daughters, and initially thought the youngest two — aged seven and eight — slept through most of it.

“I did find out at some point my eight-year-old woke up but she was so terrified, she just laid in her bed and cried,” Fort said. “Now what we're seeing from them, they're afraid to be alone. They're having issues going through their normal routines. And so we're just — we're trying to recover from this.”

Fort said there's been a strategic attack on the press for some time, but the arrests of her and Lemon takes things to a new level. “I really want American people to understand, attacking the press is not simply attacking journalists,” she said. “It's attacking the public's right to know.”

Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023 following a bumpy run as a morning host, has said he had no affiliation to the group that disrupted the Sunday service by entering the church.

Lemon said he couldn't say much about the case but he said he was not a protester.

“I went there to be a journalist. I went there to chronicle and document and record what was happening. I was following that one group around, and so that’s what I did. I reported on them,” Lemon said.

Lemon said he asked the arresting officers if they would let him make a phone call. He said he was told no and that he could talk to his attorney the next day. He tried to use Siri on his Apple Watch to call his husband and his attorney but neither picked up.

A diamond bracelet he was wearing kept getting caught on his handcuffs, which hurt, and the agents told Lemon they would take it off. Lemon said he asked if the agent would mind taking it up to Lemon's husband in his hotel room and they agreed to do that.

“And that’s how my husband found out. Otherwise, no one would have known where I was,” Lemon said.

Lemon said he was kept in a holding room at the federal courthouse from midnight until 1 p.m. the following day.

Kimmel himself became a symbol of a fight against censorship last year, when ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for remarks made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air shortly before that.

ABC lifted the suspension after a public outcry, and Kimmel returned to the air with much stronger ratings than before. In Congress, Democratic senators raised concerns that Carr’s actions trampled on the First Amendment.

Associated Press media writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

Don Lemon arrives at the 68th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

MADRID (AP) — Spain plans to ban social media access for children under 16, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Tuesday, in a move designed to shield young people from the harms of online content.

Sánchez chided the world's biggest tech companies in a speech at a Dubai summit for allowing illegal content such as child sex abuse and nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images and videos to proliferate on their platforms, saying that governments also needed to “stop turning a blind eye.”

“Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone," Sánchez said. “We will no longer accept that.”

Spain joins a growing number of countries, including Australia and France, which have taken or are considering measures to restrict minors' access to social media.

In January, France approved a bill banning social media for children under 15, paving the way for the measure to take effect at the start of the next school year in September. The bill would also ban the use of mobile phones in high schools.

Australia has started implementing the world's first social media ban for under-16s, after its government passed a measure that holds platforms including TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for failing to prevent children from having accounts.

Denmark has introduced similar legislation to ban access to social media for users under 15, while the U.K. said last month it would consider banning young teenagers from social media, as it tightens laws designed to protect children from harmful content and excessive screen time.

Sánchez said that Spain would require social media companies to enforce the ban with age verification systems, “not just check boxes, but real barriers that work."

Many social media apps require users to be at least 13, though enforcement varies. Users are often asked to declare their own age.

Spain's ban will be added to an already existing measure centered on digital protections for minors that is being debated by parliament, a government spokesperson said. Sánchez said that could happen as early as next week.

It’s unclear if Sánchez’s left-wing coalition will get the approval needed in Parliament, where his government lacks a majority. A spokesperson for the far-right Vox party said the Sánchez government's measure was aimed at "making sure that no one criticizes them,” while the main opposition party — the center-right Popular Party — said it had proposed similar restrictions last year, seemingly offering its support.

Social media companies Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — and X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sánchez also said that Spain had joined five other European countries in what the Spanish leader dubbed a “coalition of the digitally willing" to coordinate the regulation of social media platforms at a multinational level.

Additionally, Spain would make it a criminal offense to manipulate algorithms to amplify illegal content and would hold tech executives liable for failing to take down criminal content from their platforms, he said.

“No more pretending that technology is neutral," Sánchez said.

Both measures would require parliamentary approval to change Spanish law, a government spokesperson said.

FILE - A 12-year-old boy plays with his personal phone outside school, in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, FIle)

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a media conference at the end of the EU summit in Brussels, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Havana)