Don Lemon’s lengthy history of anti-ICE rhetoric

Former CNN host Don Lemon has a lengthy history of espousing anti-ICE rhetoric leading up to his participation in the church chaos fueled by left-wing agitators. 

Lemon was arrested on Friday for his involvement in livestreaming the viral disruption at St. Paul’s Cities Church service led by anti-ICE protesters. Lemon has maintained he was at the church as a journalist, not as a protester. However, his past remarks about ICE suggest he was supportive of their stance. 

“F— off, ICE. F— all the way off,” Lemon said in a video posted Jan. 8 following the ICE-involved fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good in Minnesota. 

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“You are lowlife losers, and you feel empowered by your ‘Dear Leader’ Donald Trump,” he told ICE. “You’ve never had this position in power before — small person. And you are treating people in an inhumane way and you don’t even understand why because you’re too dumb to figure it out. You’re the poorly educated that Donald Trump loves.” 

“That’s who you are… You are fat-f— losers who just crawled out of a trailer park from some Proud Boy meeting, or if not worse,” he continued. “You are thugs, jack-booted thugs.”

In October, Lemon urged Black and Brown people to “get a gun legally” so they can be prepared for when ICE agents show up at their doorstep. 

“Because when you have people knocking on your door and taking you away without due process as a citizen, isn’t that what the Second Amendment was written for?” Lemon exclaimed to liberal podcaster Wajahat Ali. 

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He went on to declare, “Nobody is illegal,” adding, “It is a misdemeanor to cross the border.”

Lemon’s anti-ICE rhetoric goes as far back as President Donald Trump’s first term in office when he was a primetime host on CNN.

In July 2018, Lemon said it was “amazingly tone-deaf” for an ICE official to compare family residential centers where children were being held to “summer camp.” The remarks came after an ICE official said the children have educational opportunities, basketball courts, exercise classes and soccer fields during a hearing on Capitol Hill. After Lemon criticized the analogy, he teed up political commentator Maria Cardona to bash the comparison as “nothing less than disgusting.”

In June 2019, Trump tweeted that ICE would remove millions of immigrants who illegally found their way into the United States. The message was criticized by Lemon, who suggested it was simply an attempt “to look tough on the same day that he launches his 2020 campaign.”

Lemon sounded the alarm about a month later as the ICE crackdowns were set to begin, telling viewers that “fear is spreading in communities across the country.”

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In August 2019, Lemon was peeved that ICE raids in Mississippi occurred on the first day of school.

“Imagine the nervous excitement of a child attending their first day of school only to find that when it’s time to go home and share the story of their emotional day, they can’t. Their mother or father is gone, taken away from them. Detained by the government. Uncertain if and when they will be together again. This separation of families played out for hundreds of migrants picked up in massive raids carried out by ICE throughout Mississippi yesterday,” Lemon told viewers.

Lemon also insisted Trump’s “immigration policy is so cruel it would make Lady Liberty hang her head in shame,” before adding, “it seems there is no room for shame in this administration.”

“He is literally rewriting what this nation stands for. What it stood for until now anyway,” Lemon said at the time. “Whatever happened to the land of opportunity? The land that welcomes those huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Welcomes them without asking whether they can pay their way?”

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Following Good’s death, Lemon reveled at his ability to speak bluntly to ICE as an “independent journalist.”

“You stupid, dumb, ignorant, poorly-educated Proud Boys, Nazis marching through — whatever it is you are,” Lemon said in his diatribe. “And that mask that you’re wearing — why won’t you identify yourselves?… Show people who you are if you think you’re as big and powerful as you think you are.”

“But mark my words: karma is a b—-,” Lemon later warned. “And this administration is going to find out. And guess what — you know who’s going to be the first people to f— around and find out? That’s gonna be the very same thugs who are rounding people up without due process because they’re not smart enough to know what they’re doing, and they have not been trained. They’re gonna end up losing their freedom because of a cult leader and someone who’s just as dumb as them, but maybe just smart enough to co-opt them into becoming subhumans. So ICE, f— you.”

Prior to his arrest, Lemon faced legal threats from the Justice Department over his involvement in the protest. Top DOJ officials suggested his freedom as a journalist may not “shield” him from charges, specifically violations of the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.  There is no more important time for people like Don to be doing this work.” 

Lowell continued, “Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case. This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

The FACE Act makes it a federal crime, with potentially steep fines and jail time, to use or threaten to use force to “injure, intimidate, or interfere” with a person seeking reproductive health services, or with a person lawfully trying to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. It also prohibits intentional property damage to a facility providing reproductive health services or a place of religious worship. The Ku Klux Klan Act makes it a federal crime for individuals to deny citizens their civil rights.