A US military veteran arrested on federal conspiracy charges after participating in a June 2025 protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the Guardian he refuses to plead guilty and is ready to face justice.

The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, said Bajun Mavalwalla, who walked foot patrols as US army sergeant in the Horn of Panjwai, the birthplace of the Taliban and one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province.

“It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect,” he said. “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, 36, faces six years in prison, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to “impede or injure a federal officer” when he joined other demonstrators who sought to block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants who were arrested by ICE at a routine immigration hearing in Spokane, Washington, in June 2025.

He pleaded not guilty. This is Mavalwalla’s first interview since the FBI arrested him in July.

The 11 June protest against ICE that led to Mavalwalla’s arrest 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.

A month after the protest, federal prosecutors took the unusual step of bringing conspiracy charges against nine of the demonstrators. Legal experts said the episode marked an escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on first amendment rights to free speech. Media reports of Mavalwalla’s arrest also sparked outrage by fellow veterans who called his prosecution un-democratic.

In a statement to the Guardian, the Department of Justice (DoJ) 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, who was serving as acting US attorney in eastern Washington at the time, resigned rather than sign the indictment against Mavalwalla and eight others. “Nobody was hurt,” he said. “None of the agents were hurt and none of the protesters were hurt either.”

Barker had worked for the justice department for 11 years and focused on prosecuting drug smugglers and human traffickers. But the day after the Spokane protest, the justice department sent him – and the 92 other US attorneys nationwide – a memo that demanded they prioritize prosecutions of anti-ICE protesters.

Barker authorized an investigation. He knew that other US attorneys had been ousted for refusing to comply with Trump justice department orders.

But Barker also worried about his ability to act ethically if he stayed on the job. When he learned members of his office were preparing a conspiracy indictment against against Mavalwalla and eight others, he decided to resign. “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.

A one-minute video of the protest posted on Instagram shows Mavallwalla – tall, with a neat goatee and sporting a black “Give a Damn” T-Shirt – briefly jostle with masked federal agents outside the government building where the immigrants were being held. One ICE agent appears to push Mavalwalla from behind, knocking him into another agent, who grabs him. Mavalwalla and the agent then briefly appear to shove each other before they disengage.

Then, the demonstrators back up and link arms to try to block a gate to stop ICE from taking the migrants away.

Last month, US district court judge James Robart, a George W Bush appointee, ordered one of the migrants arrested that day released from Department of Homeland Security custody, ruling his detention was unconstitutional, adding that “all persons, regardless of their immigration status, are entitled to due process under the fifth amendment.”

The other migrant whose arrest by ICE prompted the Spokane protest did not file a lawsuit challenging his detention and was deported.

Since Mavalwalla’s arrest in July, the use of federal conspiracy charges has become more commonplace. Prosecutors have filed conspiracy charges against demonstrators in Chicago and also investigated the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, and the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, for the same alleged crime. In a social media post, Walz condemned the probe, calling it an “authoritarian tactic”.

Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort have also been charged with conspiracy to violate religious freedom, stemming from their coverage of a protest inside a Minnesota church. Both Lemon and Fort have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

In his interview with the Guardian, Mavalwalla said he never conspired with anyone. He said he “happened to be scrolling” on social media and saw a post about the demonstration “pop up”.

“Conspiracy requires people communicating, planning it out and, saying, yeah, we’re going to do this, and this is why we’re going to do it, and this is how we’re going to do it,” he said. “None of that happened, at least not as far as I know. I wasn’t part of any of it.”

Six of Mavalwalla’s eight co-defendants have pled guilty, however, striking deals with federal prosecutors acknowledging they conspired to impede ICE officers in the performance of their duty, in exchange for 18 months probation.

But Mavalwalla, whose mother, father and girlfriend all served in the US army, said he is not willing to admit to a crime he did not commit.

“We’re not weak people. We’re willing to fight for what’s right,” said his girlfriend, Katelyn Gaston, who deployed as a medic in Afghanistan. “It’s a first amendment issue.”

“My son is incredibly brave,” added his father Bajun Ray Mavalwalla, a former US army intelligence officer who earned three Bronze Stars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Inspired by his arrest and concerned about what he sees as the misuse of government authority, the elder Mavalwalla announced in January that he was running for Congress – challenging Spokane’s Republican incumbent, Michael Baumgartner.

Baumgartner has been reluctant to weigh in. In a statement, the congressman said that while he did “not know all the specific facts of this case”, he appreciated Mavalwalla “for his years of service to our nation wearing the uniform and serving in Afghanistan”, adding that, “he, like everyone, is innocent until proven guilty.”

Mavalwalla’s trial is set to open 18 May in federal court in Spokane. The presiding judge, Rebecca Pennell, is a former public defender, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden.

As he awaits trial, Mavalwalla said he will continue to speak out. “Every single person here, except for the people who are indigenous to the Americas, is an immigrant or comes from immigrants,” he said.

“What is America without immigrants?” he asked.