SPOKANE, Wash. — The quiet of the Pacific Northwest morning shattered at 6 a.m. on July 15, 2025, when the sound of heavy banging woke Bajun Mavalwalla.
Outside his door, the street was closed off, filled with federal agents in tactical gear. It was the FBI, and they were there to arrest the U.S. Army veteran.
The charge was conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, a felony carrying a potential six-year prison sentence.
While dozens of people have been arrested in recent years during protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), PBS NewsHour reports that Baji Mavalwalla’s case marks a significant shift.
This is the first time the Justice Department has utilized conspiracy charges against an American in connection with these ongoing demonstrations.
”I don’t think that you really realize how far away we have come from democracy until you open the door and see federal agents to arrest your son for a nonviolent protest,” says Mavalwalla’s father, Bajun Ray Mavalwalla, a veteran who earned three Bronze Stars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The arrest stems from a protest five weeks earlier in Spokane.
Mavalwalla, who served as a signals specialist in Afghanistan, says he was moved to act after seeing a Facebook post about two legal asylum-seekers being detained for deportation.
The demonstration was largely peaceful, though video captured a brief physical tangle between Mavalwalla and masked federal agents after he was pushed into one.
Despite no injuries to officers or protesters, the DOJ issued a nationwide memo the following day demanding that U.S. attorneys prioritize the prosecution of anti-ICE protesters.
The directive was enough to push Richard Barker, then the acting U.S. attorney for eastern Washington, to resign. Barker, an 11-year DOJ veteran, told Aaron Glantz of PBS NewsHour in his first on-camera interview since stepping down that he could not ethically justify seeking a six-year sentence for what he viewed as a nonviolent exercise of First Amendment rights.
”I didn’t feel in this case like I could consider a charge that would carry a term of six years of incarceration was true to who I was or who I wanted to be as a government prosecutor,” Barker says.
The use of federal conspiracy charges against protesters has since spread to cities like Chicago, and investigations have even targeted state and local officials. For Mavalwalla, the prosecution feels like a betrayal of the values he wore the uniform to protect.
”You have a right, as an American, to voice your opinion,” Mavalwalla says. “You can’t do it violently ... but you have a right to stand up for what you believe in.”
Mavalwalla’s jury trial is scheduled to begin May 18. His father, spurred by the arrest, has launched a campaign for Congress in Washington's 5th Congressional District for the 2026 election cycle.
