Afghanistan war veteran arrested after ICE protest prepares for trial
2025-12-11 12:00
An Afghanistan war veteran arrested on felony “conspiracy” charges a month after he participated in a protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains his innocence and is preparing for a jury trial, even as others arrested the same day strike plea agreements to avoid long prison terms, his father said.
Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining an anti-ICE protest in Spokane, Washington.
Legal experts have said the case marks an escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on first amendment rights. Veterans’ groups have decried the charges as “un-American”.
“My son is innocent,” said his father, Bajun Ray Mavalwalla, a retired US army intelligence officer with three Bronze stars earned during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The elder Mavalwalla said many of the people he meets in conservative eastern Washington state believe the government has over-reached. He launched an exploratory committee to challenge Spokane’s Republican representative Michael Baumgartner this fall after the Guardian featured his son’s arrest, drawing national attention to the case.
At the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, people say “‘Oh my God! This is an incredible injustice,’” Mavalwalla said. “‘Your son is a hero. He served his country. FBI agents should be out catching bank robbers and human traffickers. To use these agents to handcuff a veteran who was protesting is just ridiculous and a violation of constitutional rights … ‘”
The protest turned confrontational, leaving a government van’s windshield smashed and tires slashed, but Mavalwalla was not among the more than two dozen people arrested at the scene. More than a month passed before the FBI arrived at his door on 15 July.
Ben Stuckart, the former president of the Spokane city council, called for the protest, declaring in a Facebook post that he intended to physically block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants who were in the country legally when they were arrested by ICE.
On Monday, Stuckart pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge, avoiding the maximum sentence of six years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
Instead, under an agreement reached with federal prosecutors, he was sentenced to 18 months supervised release with a promise to reduce the charges to a misdemeanor if there are no additional violations.
“Situations like this are happening all across the country,” Stuckart said of the arrest of the Venezuelan immigrants, who eventually opted to self-deport after sustained incarceration.
“At the time, it was my hope that the government would do the right thing and release them from custody. I understood what I was up against, but I felt it was necessary to take a stand. I accept full responsibility for my conduct,” he said.
Court records show prosecutors have now reached plea agreements with four of the nine individuals arrested for conspiracy after the demonstration in Spokane. Observers believe all but Mavawalla will strike deals to avoid prison. Representatives of the US attorney’s office in Spokane did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In continuing to contest the charges, Mavalwalla faces the same potential penalties Stuckart did: six years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
The indictments were handed down two days after career prosecutor Richard Barker, the acting US attorney for eastern Washington state, resigned. In a social post, Barker wrote: “I am grateful that I never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that I didn’t believe in.”
In August, Donald Trump nominated Pete Serrano, a former litigator for the Silent Majority Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, to head the office, while also installing him in an interim capacity. Serrano has no prosecutorial experience and has described the January 6 US Capitol rioters as “political prisoners”.
After pleading guilty to conspiracy, Stuckart invoked the memory of Martin Luther King, who was arrested 29 times, often in acts of civil disobedience.
King “explained that the antidote to fear is courage”, Stuckart said at sentencing: “We must be courageous, while accepting the consequences for our actions. And we must never stop fighting for each other.”
Clayborne Carson, a professor emeritus of history and director of the Martin Luther King Jr Papers Project at Stanford University, said that the FBI’s arrest of Mavalwalla and his co-defendants represented an escalation from the agency’s activities during the civil rights era.
“The FBI spied on Dr King. They spied on me,” he said. “There was even a file that said I had been ‘seen at the beach’.” But back then, Carson said, the FBI was seen as an ‘investigative agency’, not as one that would swoop in and put an activist in handcuffs.
“I cannot think of an instance where the FBI arrested Dr King for conspiracy,” he said.