Federal jury finds army veteran and two other ICE protesters guilty of conspiracy | Trump administration
A federal jury on Thursday found three protesters at a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in June 2025, including a U.S. service veteran of the war in Afghanistan, guilty of felony conspiracy charges.
Legal experts said the Spokane, Washington, case marks a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on First Amendment rights. Demonstrators now face up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
They are expected to object. All three defendants filed a rarely used motion asking U.S. district court judge Rebecca Pennell to set aside guilty verdicts. The motion, known as Rule 29, allows defense attorneys to argue that the prosecution’s evidence is so weak that no rational juror could find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I’m not finished. I’ll keep fighting,” said Bajun Mavalwalla, a former U.S. army sergeant who was among those convicted.
His father, Bajun Ray Mavalwalla, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer with three Bronze Stars earned in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the decision “sets a precedent for those who want to deprive people of their rights to speech, expression and assembly.”
Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and executive director of the Fred T Korematsu Center for Law and Equity, called the decision “frightening.”
“By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy,” he said. “The goalposts keep moving.”
The elder Mavalwalla said he was inspired by his son’s courage and “unwavering devotion to the beliefs and principles” for which he fought in Afghanistan. Other veterans also attended the hearing and offered their support.
The case attracted national attention. Acting US attorney for Eastern Washington state, Richard Barker, resigned rather than sign the indictment, telling the Guardian: “None of the agents were injured and none of the protesters were injured.”
In February, a federal judge ruled that the detention of a Venezuelan immigrant whose transportation protesters tried to block from deportation was unconstitutional and ordered his release.
But the jury from conservative Eastern Washington state did not hear these facts at trial, thanks to Judge Pennell’s rulings. Pennell, a former federal public defender and an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, also ruled that protesters on trial cannot use the First Amendment as a defense, but are allowed to state their reasons for demonstrating.
Instead, the jury watched hours of law enforcement body camera video and listened to a parade of ICE agents, a federal contractor and local law enforcement; one of them, ICE agent Jared Tomaso, said he was “concerned for the officers’ safety.”
In the middle of the hearing, Range, a local media outlet, clarified He said Jeremy Burlingame, the ICE agent who testified, wrote social media posts calling Black politicians “lying ghetto trash” and transgender people “mentally ill.” He highlighted a post showing ICE detaining a pregnant woman at gunpoint and calling her a “pregnant squatter.”
Federal prosecutors found the posts troubling enough to warrant recalling Burlingame to remove him from office, even though he was their witness. Assistant U.S. attorney Lisa Cartier-Giroux called Burlingame’s posts in open court “appalling” and said she reported his behavior to ICE. At the hearing, Burlingame acknowledged that an investigation was ongoing.
But Burlingame’s online posts, the fact that ICE officers were not injured, and the lack of evidence of communication between the three defendants before the protest were not enough to sway the jury.
About 24 hours after closing arguments ended, they returned unanimous guilty verdicts for the three defendants.
The decision left a bad taste in former US attorney Barker’s mouth.
“I question whether justice has truly been served with today’s verdict,” Barker said.
He noted that the case was the first prosecution in Eastern Washington state under 18 USC section 372 – “a Civil War-era statute to punish members of our community who stood up for two young men unlawfully detained by ICE.”
Barker said he hopes that in the future, “DOJ will focus on the crimes that matter most to keep our families safe and build trust in the communities that most need and deserve law enforcement protection.”
The guilty verdicts in conservative eastern Washington state contrasted with the results of a similar conspiracy case launched by federal prosecutors in Chicago.
On May 8, justice ministry officials there acknowledged: deny conspiracy charges Protesters were prosecuted at ICE’s Broadview detention facility and were tried on misdemeanor charges instead.
