Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang was charged with damaging a $6,000 ice sculpture that a veterans organization displayed on the front steps of the State Capitol.
Lang, 30, of Lake Worth, Fla., recorded social media videos of him on Thursday kicking down portions of the ice sculpture that spelled out “prosecute ICE” to instead read “pro ICE.” After Lang hosted an anti-Muslim, pro-ICE rally last month, during which he was chased off by hundreds of protesters in downtown Minneapolis, he returned to Minnesota to host another rally at the Capitol on Saturday.
????#BREAKING: Watch the moment conservative activist Jake Lang is arrested outside the Minnesota State Capitol after defacing an ice sculpture that read Prosecute ICE altering it to read Pro ICE Authorities are charging him with a felony for causing approximately $6,000 in… pic.twitter.com/aSDi8jgmnw
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) February 5, 2026
But on Thursday, he was arrested and booked into Ramsey County jail. He was charged with one felony count of first-degree damage to property Friday, when Ramsey County Judge Kelly Olmstead signed an order banning Lang from a three-block radius of the Capitol. He was released on his own recognizance, promising to appear at his next court appearance on March 3.
The art installation made of large blocks of ice was permitted to be on display Thursday, charges state. Common Defense Organization, a veteran-led grassroots organization, paid a local artist $6,250 to create the sculpture. Lang told troopers that he was exercising his “First Amendment Right to Artistic Expression,” charges state, and he admitted to recording himself damaging the sculpture.
Common Defense said in an online statement that veterans had erected the commissioned sculpture earlier that day.
“Our community of veterans and partners exercised our First Amendment rights the right way. We organized, secured legal permits, and commissioned a professional ice sculpture to advocate for accountability in federal immigration operations. But while actual soldiers and veterans were doing the work of democracy, a professional agitator was allegedly looking for a photo op.”
The organization said while Lang “plays dress-up for social media clout, our movement is busy doing the real work of defending our communities and our Constitution.”
Lang was pardoned in 2025 by Trump after serving four years in prison on 11 charges including assault for attacking Capitol police officers with a baseball bat.
“I gave eight years of my life in service to this country in the military. For a January 6 insurrectionist to destroy our display is an attack on the First Amendment veterans like me fought to defend,” said Common Defense communications director Jacob Thomas in a statement.
Lang held an anti-Islam rally outside Minneapolis City Hall on Jan. 17, and had originally organized a pro-ICE rally at the Capitol for Feb. 7. After he was banned from Capitol grounds, he opted to meet at the Whipple building where local federal immigration efforts are centered.
Hundreds of protesters showed up in opposition to Lang, whom they accuse of inciting hateful, racist rhetoric in Minneapolis, a city on edge as the largest immigration enforcement in the country unfolds.
Lang on Saturday pulled up in a U-Haul truck at Whipple and drove by the crowd standing in the back while holding bags and agitating the protesters. A few Lang supporters in the back of the truck were masked and armed with paint ball guns and mace that they sprayed and fired at protesters who chased after the U-Haul.
Hundreds of protesters chased Lang off in downtown Minneapolis to prevent him from his stated plans to burn a Quran and march to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, home to the city’s highest concentration of Somali American residents.
Good Samaritans helped Lang safely escape the crowd, including a 30-year-old Black man who escorted him downtown and a Black trans woman and Black woman who unexpectedly became his getaway drivers.