'At your peril': Current, former federal prosecutors critical of outrage over guilty verdicts of Spokane ICE protesters

May 29-A day after three Spokane protesters were convicted of conspiracy against federal agents, current and former U.S. attorneys voiced their two cents on the outrage about the verdict: that the law isn't optional.

"Everyone in this free country has the right to make their voices heard, and we encourage the exercise of that right," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Serrano said in a statement issued Friday afternoon. "But no one has the right to cross the line into lawbreaking."

When the 12-person jury found military combat veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II, activist Justice Forral and activist and Gonzaga Law School alum Jac Archer guilty of conspiracy to impede or injure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 11 during a protest, their supporters were outraged. Many in the courtroom left in tears. Others said the decision to pursue the charges was a political move aligned with the Trump administration's priority to prosecute protesters who defy immigration enforcement, The Spokesman-Review reported.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said she thought the case had political motives behind it from the beginning, according to a statement released by her office Thursday afternoon.

Archer's attorney Carl Oreskovich called the prosecution and subsequent conviction as an "extraordinarily aggressive approach."

"It certainly is going to chill people who want to utilize their First Amendment right to dissent against government actions that they don't agree with," he told The Spokesman-Review.

But Jim McDevitt, Eastern Washington's U.S. attorney from 2001 to 2010, believes it was an appropriate case to bring to a federal jury. McDevitt was appointed by former President George W. Bush and remained in the post for nearly two years during the Obama administration.

"You don't pick and choose the laws you want to enforce," McDevitt said, adding that the critical comments are "an insult to the jury that heard the evidence and the people that brought the indictment."

The case widely examined the lines between the First Amendment and when assembly can turn into a crime. Protesters that day had showed up to Spokane's ICE facility at 411 W. Cataldo Ave. to sit in front of a bus to prevent it from taking a group of immigrants to a federal detention center in Tacoma. The initial group that stationed themselves in front of the bus, including Archer, had intended to remain nonviolent and were prepared to be arrested.

When protesters saw agents attempting to leave out of a parking lot gate, they ran to the gate and stood in front of it. Agents then came outside, walked into the crowd and began pushing and grabbing people, pulling them towards the ground, video footage from the trial showed.

At some point, protesters slashed the tires of the transport vehicles and others linked arms around a red U.S. Customs and Border Patrol van to stop it from leaving. Local police arrived hours later to create a pathway for the agents to transport the immigrants from the facility. Police threw smoke canisters and pepper balls to push protesters away from the building. One police car was damaged, but no one was injured. After police declared the protest to be an unlawful assembly officers arrested about 30 people.

"There are ways to protest and then ways to break the law. Everyone has a different view of a peaceful protest," McDevitt said. "I am one of the biggest advocates of free speech, but when you go beyond that, keeping people hostage and you think that is free speech, I disagree."

"People were saying they wanted to get arrested, but crossing the federal line brings it to a whole different level," McDevitt added. "When those lines are crossed you do so at your peril."

McDevitt's office pursued federal civil rights violations against Spokane Police Officer Karl Thompson for beating unarmed 36-year-old Otto Zehm in the head and neck with his baton in 2006 and then obstructing an investigation.

Zehm died two days after the confrontation in a north Spokane Zip Trip store where he was hogtied, had stopped breathing and was taken to the hospital.

Thompson was sentenced to 51 months in prison in 2012. The act of pursuing charges against Thompson, McDevitt said, was widely discouraged among city officials. He didn't trust that Thompson would be adequately held accountable in state court because of the local "chatter." Charging someone federally gets rid of the chatter, he believes.

"If they're state charges and it becomes political, locally, you have to deal with all that," he added.

Bajun Mavalwalla Sr. told reporters and supporters of the defendants on Thursday after the verdict that he felt the politics of Washington , D.C ., were brought to Eastern Washington to stop people from protesting against the current administration, but "all of those things are now in question because of this case," he said. "My son has taken the brunt of the entire weight of the United States government onto their shoulders."

Serrano said the "sole motivation" for the prosecution was to hold the defendants accountable.

Politicization in the U.S. Department of Justice isn't unusual, McDevitt said. He witnessed people fired for political reasons under both Bush and Obama.

To avoid a perception of politicization, he said, "You (have to) look at the facts and the investigation."

"You decide there is a crime and you take that to a grand jury. But you don't let politics enter into your decisions," McDevitt said. "The public loses confidence in the justice system when they see that happen."

A news release Friday from the U.S. Attorney's Office of Eastern Washington acknowledged criticism of the jury's verdict.

"Just because the jury did not find in a way that some people wanted, does not negate the fact that a crime occurred," Serrano wrote in the release.

He also dismissed criticism from public officials.

"Statements made by current or former public officials who never set foot in the courtroom during the trial bear no relevance to these facts or the outcome of this case," the release stated. "Had the jury's verdict gone another way, the United States Attorney's Office would be issuing this same statement today: the jury has rendered its verdict, let us all respect it."

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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 11:38 PM.