SPOKANE, WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Bajun Mavalwalla at his home in Spokane, Washington at 6:00 a.m. on July 15, 2025, on conspiracy charges for his role in an anti-ICE protest. It was the first time an American had been charged with conspiracy in connection with the ongoing ICE protests.

Two days after former Acting U.S. Attorney Richard Barker resigned from his position in the Eastern District of Washington, his successor filed an indictment charging Mavalwalla and eight others with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. If convicted on the conspiracy charges, Mavalwalla faces up to six years in prison.

The charges stem from events five weeks before Mavalwalla's arrest, when he saw a Facebook post from the former president of the Spokane City Council stating that two men with pending asylum applications had been detained at a routine ICE check-in and were going to be deported. During the subsequent protest, an ICE agent pushed Mavalwalla from behind into a second agent who grabbed him, and they briefly shoved each other before disengaging. Dozens of protesters were arrested at the protest, but Mavalwalla was not among those arrested.

The Department of Justice sent a memo to all 93 U.S. attorneys nationwide the day after the Spokane protest, instructing them to prioritize prosecutions of ICE protesters. After receiving the DOJ memo, Barker authorized an investigation and his staff began preparing a conspiracy indictment against Mavalwalla and eight others.

"Something's not right. And I went and I looked out the upstairs window. The street is all closed off and there's a bunch of guys with rifles," he said, describing the morning of his arrest. On that day, he was preparing to move into a new house that he and his girlfriend, Katelyn Gaston, had purchased using a VA mortgage.

Barker, who monitored the protest from his office on the other side of the Spokane River, expressed reservations about the case before resigning. "I went to bed that evening feeling like this situation could have been a lot worse than how it ended up," Barker said. "Nobody was really hurt. None of the protesters were hurt. Fortunately, none of the law enforcement officers were hurt either."

The former prosecutor, who had worked for the Department of Justice for 11 years focusing on prosecuting drug smugglers and murderers, ultimately decided against pursuing the conspiracy charges. "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 who I wanted to be as a federal prosecutor," he said.

Mavalwalla is a veteran who provided signals intelligence in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. In 2021, when Kabul fell to the Taliban, he volunteered to help dozens of American Afghan allies relocate to the United States.

"I'm pretty upset about how this country is treating immigrants. The people they rolled up were legal asylum seekers. They have been doing everything right," he said about the detained men whose situation prompted the protest. "Every single person here, except for the people who are indigenous to the Americas, is an immigrant or comes from immigrants. It's absolutely ludicrous to think that we can get away with not bringing people in, especially people who we told, hey, if you help us, we will help you."

The Department of Justice stated 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."