Georgia Fort said federal agents came to her front door on 30 January and arrested her after she covered a protest inside a St. Paul church, where she said her three children were in the house. Fort, 38, said she was taken into custody for doing her job and that she was being punished for being a member of the press.
Fort was one of two journalists charged for covering the 18 January protest at St Paul’s Cities church, alongside Don Lemon. The protest took place during services, and Fort said she had filmed it a few weeks earlier before agents showed up at her home. She went live as the arrest unfolded, saying she wanted to explain who she was, defend her record in journalism and alert the public that she believed her First Amendment rights were being violated.
Fort has worked as a journalist for nearly two decades and has been independent for roughly the last eight years. She has more than 130,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 160,000 on Facebook, making her one of the most visible local reporters tied to the case. In 2020, she watched journalist Omar Jimenez be arrested live on television by Minnesota state patrol, a moment she said stayed with her and shaped how she approached her own arrest.
The church protest came during the height of Operation Metro Surge in January, when dozens of people entered the church. The pastor reportedly works as a field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nearly 40 people have now been charged over the protest, turning a single church demonstration into a sprawling federal case that has drawn out the fight over who can be prosecuted for simply covering events as they unfold.
Harmeet Dhillon said the government is going to pursue the case to the ends of the earth, underscoring how aggressively federal prosecutors are treating it. Fort said that made the arrest feel especially personal, calling it a slap in the face to be prosecuted in the same courts where she has been credentialed as a member of the press. The immediate issue now is not whether the protest happened — it did — but whether the government is prepared to test just how far it can go in charging journalists for documenting it.
