Police in Cincinnati arrested at least 13 people, including two journalists, after demonstrators protesting the immigration detention of a former hospital chaplain blocked a two-lane bridge carrying traffic over the Ohio River.
A reporter and a photography intern who were arrested while covering the protest for CityBeat, a Cincinnati news and entertainment outlet, were among those arraigned Friday morning in a Kentucky court.
Other journalists reporting on protests around the U.S. have been have arrested and injured this year. More than two dozen were hurt or roughed up while covering protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles.
A Spanish-language journalist was arrested in June while covering a No Kings protest near Atlanta. Police initially charged Mario Guevara, a native of El Salvador, with unlawful assembly, obstruction of police and being a pedestrian on or along the roadway.
A prosecutor dropped the charges, but Guevara had already been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is being held in a south Georgia immigration detention center. His lawyers say he has been authorized to work and remain in the country, but ICE is trying to deport him.
Video from the demonstration in Cincinnati Thursday night shows several tense moments, including when an officer punches a protester several times as police wrestle him to the ground.
Earlier, a black SUV drove slowly onto the Roebling Bridge while protesters walked along the roadway that connects Cincinnati with Kentucky. Another video shows a person in a neon-colored vest pushing against the SUV.
Police in Covington, Kentucky, said those arrested had refused to comply with orders to disperse. The department said in a statement that officers who initially attempted to talk with the protest’s organizer were threatened and met with hostility.
Among the charges filed against those arrested were rioting, failing to disperse, obstructing emergency responders, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.
Reporter Madeline Fening and photo intern Lucas Griffith were charged with felony rioting and several other charges, said Ashley Moor, the editor in chief of CityBeat.
A judge on Friday set a $2,500 bond for each of those arrested.
The arrests happened during a protest in support of Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian immigrant who worked as a chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He was detained last week after he showed up for a routine check-in with ICE officials at their office near Cincinnati.
Protesters met in downtown Cincinnati on Thursday in support of Soliman, then walked across the bridge carrying a banner that read “Build Bridges Not Walls.”
Covington police said that “while the department supports the public’s right to peaceful assembly and expression, threatening officers and blocking critical infrastructure, such as a major bridge, presents a danger to all involved.”
