Levka"US veteran charged with ‘conspiracy’ over ICE protest refuses to plead guilty
The right to protest is ‘fundamentally American’, says Bajun Mavalwalla who awaits trial and faces six years in prison.
A US military veteran arrested on federal conspiracy charges after participating in a June 2025 protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the Guardian he refuses to plead guilty and is ready to face justice.
The right to protest is 'supposed to be fundamentally American', said Bajun Mavalwalla, who walked foot patrols as US army sergeant in the Horn of Panjwai, the birthplace of the Taliban and one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.
'It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect,' he said. 'You can’t do it violently. You can’t do it in a way that harms other people, but you have a right to stand up for what you believe in.'
Mavalwalla, 36, faces six years in prison, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to 'impede or injure a federal officer' when he joined other demonstrators who sought to block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants who were arrested by ICE at a routine immigration hearing in Spokane, Washington, in June 2025.
He pleaded not guilty. This is Mavalwalla’s first interview since the FBI arrested him in July.
The 11 June protest against ICE that led to Mavalwalla’s arrest was confrontational at times, leaving a government vehicle damaged. Demonstrators also linked arms as they faced down masked federal agents. But Mavalwalla was not among the more than two dozen people arrested at the scene.
A month after the protest, federal prosecutors took the unusual step of bringing conspiracy charges against nine of the demonstrators. Legal experts said the episode marked an escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on first amendment rights to free speech. Media reports of Mavalwalla’s arrest also sparked outrage by fellow veterans who called his prosecution un-democratic.
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Richard Barker, who was serving as acting US attorney in eastern Washington at the time, resigned rather than sign the indictment against Mavalwalla and eight others. 'Nobody was hurt,' he said. 'None of the agents were hurt and none of the protesters were hurt either.'
Barker had worked for the justice department for 11 years and focused on prosecuting drug smugglers and human traffickers. But the day after the Spokane protest, the justice department sent him – and the 92 other US attorneys nationwide – a memo that demanded they prioritize prosecutions of anti-ICE protesters."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/20/us-army-veteran-ice-protest-trial
