A former U.S. army officer who earned three Bronze Stars in Iraq and Afghanistan would rather be imprisoned than plead guilty to his role in an anti-ICE protest.
The Guardian reports Bajun Mavalwalla, who walked foot patrols as a U.S. army sergeant in the Horn of Panjwai, the birthplace of the Taliban and one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, is adamant that he won’t cop to federal conspiracy charges in his ICE confrontation of June 2025.
He faces up to six years imprisonment, three years supervised release, and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to “impede or injure a federal officer.”
The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, said Mavalwalla. “It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect. 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’s case is part of a disturbing trend. Since his arrest in July, the use of federal conspiracy charges has become more commonplace, the Guardian reports. Among those targeted: Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey.
Mavalwalla, 36, joined other demonstrators that tried to block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants arrested by ICE in Spokane, Washington.
The Guardian notes the protest “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. Instead, he was among nine charged a month later, an unusual time lag.
In a statement to the Guardian, the Department of Justice said it “respects the First Amendment and the right of Americans to peacefully protest, but will never tolerate the obstruction of lawful immigration operations or putting federal agents in harm’s way.”
Richard Barker, an acting U.S. attorney in eastern Washington at the time, resigned rather than sign the indictment against Mavalwalla and eight others, The Guardian reports. “Nobody was hurt,” he said. “None of the agents were hurt and none of the protesters were hurt either.”
Barker resigned when he learned members of his office were preparing a conspiracy indictment against Mavalwalla and eight others. “I didn’t feel in this case that a conspiracy charge that would carry a six-year term of incarceration was true to who I was or wanted to be as a federal prosecutor,” he told the Guardian.
Six of Mavalwalla’s eight co-defendants have pled guilty, The Guardian reports. They have acknowledged that they conspired to impede ICE officers in the performance of their duty. They will serve 18 months probation.
But Mavalwalla said he is not willing to admit to a crime he did not commit. His trial is set to open May 18th in federal court in Spokane.
