Opinion | I was arrested for doing my job as a reporter. Who’s next?

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Jan. 18 was a Sunday morning. I was on my 11th straight day of covering the unrest in Minnesota after the fatal shooting of Renee Good. I was exhausted. The 14- and 16-hour days were catching up with me.

But that day, I went to work as a journalist again, documenting a small gathering of community members at Cities Church in St. Paul. They were there taking issue with one of the pastors of that church, who was apparently also working as the acting field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s St. Paul field office. I was one of the journalists who documented what happened that day.

Twelve days later, I woke up to forceful knocking at 6 in the morning. The men at my door identified themselves as federal agents and claimed they held an arrest warrant for me. I began to pace back and forth, unsure if what they were holding was a legitimate warrant. I had already prepared myself for the possibility of being arrested, because of the amount of publicity around the church protest and because of threats to arrest Don Lemon, another independent journalist who covered the protest. Still, nothing prepared me for the terror of the moment. The agents continued to knock and demand that I come out. My mother was with me; through the door, she told them I would come out if we could send a copy of the warrant to my lawyer to verify its legitimacy.

By now, my 17-year-old daughter was awake and crying. She crawled out of her room, staying low, afraid that agents would see her through the window. I was trying to console her because I didn’t want her to wake up my younger daughters. One woke up anyway; she just lay in bed, crying.

I went live on Facebook to alert the public. When my lawyer confirmed the legitimacy of the warrant, I walked outside and surrendered to the nearly two dozen agents outside my home. I couldn’t help but think: All this for one woman? I informed the agents that I was a member of the press and that this was a violation of my First Amendment rights, but they proceeded to handcuff me. Several agents wore Drug Enforcement Administration vests. It was humiliating to think what my neighbors might speculate when they saw DEA agents.

I later learned that the agents stayed outside my home for over two hours after my arrest. My daughters and my husband were stopped and questioned when they tried to leave.

Two hours after I was taken into custody, I was transferred to another facility, where my fingerprints and DNA were taken. The officers swabbed the inside of my cheek, they said, to confirm my identity.

I was finally able to talk with my lawyer three hours after I arrived. I learned that I would have a hearing before a judge.

Representatives of the Department of Justice had gone before a Minnesota grand jury and received an indictment for my arrest on two charges. Count 1: conspiracy against right of religious freedom at place of worship, 18:241, and Count 2: injure, intimidate and interfere with exercise of right of religious freedom at place of worship, 18:248(a)(2), (b) and 2(a).

The charges I face for reporting on an event of significant public interest and concern — involving well-known Minneapolis leaders, as well as an individual apparently employed by ICE — concern not just me. They raise a far more serious question: whether journalism is still protected under the Constitution.

These incidents are not isolated. After the fatal shooting of Good, the independent photographer KingDemetrius Pendleton was tear-gassed by federal agents and was apparently shot with a chemical munitions canister. Video journalist Mark Vancleave was pushed back into his car by federal agents after trying to report on an ICE arrest, which he was covering for the Associated Press. KARE 11 anchor Jana Shortal was hit with a chemical irritant while reporting after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse.

Having the right to film and document matters. Footage can disprove false accusations or confirm hard truths. It can exonerate or incriminate. Days after the church protest, Pretti was shot. In the minutes that followed, videos from multiple angles of the shooting were published online, and this allowed the public, the press and the authorities to review the evidence.

Each violation of press freedom plants and waters seeds of repression. The recent raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter was a significant escalation in press intimidation by the government. These tactics do not need to succeed to be effective in causing fear, delay and self-censorship.

What is happening in Minnesota, and what happened to me, is not part of a series of unfortunate coincidences. It is a pattern. A pattern of intimidating the press, physically harming reporters who are covering protests and, now, taking legal action against members of the media.

These attacks should be cataloged in a database, similar to how the Committee to Protect Journalists tallies global attacks on journalists.

A society that claims to value our democracy cannot criminalize those who document threats to democracy. Charges against journalists for doing their jobs must be dropped. Physical harm and intimidation against reporters must carry consequences. If we as a nation fail to defend that principle now, clearly and without compromise, we may soon find that there is nothing left to defend.