Meet Bajun Mavalwalla, Veteran Convicted for ICE Protest in Unprecedented Use of Conspiracy Charges

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AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show with President Trump’s escalating crackdown on First Amendment rights. A federal jury last week convicted three people, including a U.S. military veteran, of felony conspiracy charges over their involvement in an anti- ICE protest in Spokane, Washington, last June. The protesters are awaiting sentencing, face up to six years in prison.

For more, we go to Spokane, where we’re joined by one of them. Bajun Mavalwalla is a U.S. military veteran in the war in Afghanistan. We’re also joined by Aaron Glantz, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, his recent piece for The Guardian headlined “Federal jury finds army veteran and two other ICE protesters guilty of conspiracy.”

Before we go to Bajun, I’m wondering, Aaron, if you can talk about the significance of this term “conspiracy.” I want to go to a clip first of an interview that you did on PBS’s News Hour . This is former Acting U.S. Attorney General Richard Barker on PBS News Hour .

RICHARD BAKER : Nobody was really hurt. None of the protesters were hurt. Fortunately, none of the law enforcement officers were hurt, either.

AARON GLANTZ : He was aware that other U.S. attorneys had been ousted for refusing to comply with Trump Justice Department orders, and he worried about his ability to act ethically if he stayed on the job, so he resigned.

RICHARD BAKER : 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 to who I wanted to be as a federal prosecutor.

AMY GOODMAN : So, that’s former Acting U.S. Attorney General Richard Barker, resigned, speaking to our guest, Aaron Glantz, on PBS News Hour . Aaron, so, talk about the significance of this conspiracy conviction, just before we go to the military veteran who was convicted.

AARON GLANTZ : I mean, what we have here is a really large reach of the conspiracy statute, the charge here conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers. What happened was a relatively minor demonstration at an ICE facility in Spokane, Washington. There was a Facebook post by the former president of the Spokane City Council about two Venezuelan migrants who were going to be, according to him, unlawfully deported. A federal judge ended up freeing one of those migrants, saying his arrest was unconstitutional. A number of demonstrators showed up. Bajun was one of them. He went home. He was going about his life. And then, a month later, the FBI showed up at his door, and a number of other demonstrators, and arrested them for conspiracy.

The individual you just heard from, Richard Barker, was the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in eastern Washington state, and he declined to sign the indictment. He resigned. When I spoke with him, he talked about the fact that here you have a case where no protesters were hurt, no ICE agents were hurt, and yet a number of the demonstrators are facing six years in prison, at the same time the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis have not been prosecuted at all, and he did not feel good about that. He talked to me about being a Sunday school teacher and needing to go before, you know, his fellow church members and talk to them about right and wrong, and he didn’t think he could stay in his job.

And I think that that’s ultimately what this case is about and what you’re going to hear from Bajun in a second. I was really impressed with him the whole time I’ve been covering this case over the past year, as somebody who signed up to serve his country in Afghanistan in 2021 when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, helping individuals come to this country to avoid being killed by the Taliban, who helped the U.S. military, and then standing up for some of his fellow residents in Spokane when the Trump administration tried to unlawfully deport them, always standing up and now facing six years in prison.

AMY GOODMAN : So, let’s go to Bajun Mavalwalla. This is your first interview since your conviction for aiding the conspiracy, for taking part in this ICE protest. Bajun, six of the nine people originally charged took plea deals, but you, Archer and Forral decided to fight. Now you’ve been convicted. Your response and why you decided to go to trial?

BAJUN MAVALWALLA : Yeah, I definitely felt like it was important to go to trial, because if I had taken a plea deal, it would have essentially been me lying and saying that, you know, I did something that I didn’t do. I didn’t assault anybody I didn’t destroy any property. And the protest was largely peaceful. And I felt that it was very important to put that in front of a jury. And I think it’s important to note that I was convicted of aiding and abetting, which was not included in the original indictment that I was arrested for back in July of last year.

AMY GOODMAN : Tal…