Outside the courthouse where a jury had just convicted three Spokanites of a federal conspiracy, folks wept, screamed and committed to continue advocating for freedom of speech.
Justice Forral, Jac Archer and Bajun Mavalwalla II had been found guilty of “conspiracy to impede or injure officers using threat, force or intimidation.” The charges stemmed from their protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) unlawful detainment of two immigrants last summer.
The protesters had responded to a Facebook post asking Spokane community members to block federal officers from taking two Venezuelan immigrants, Cesar Alvarez Perez and Joswar Rodriguez Torres, to be processed for deportation in a Tacoma ICE facility. The two men were in the US legally and a district court later ruled that Torres had been wrongfully detained. (Perez had already been deported.)
At the protest, federal agents pushed and shoved protesters, hundreds of whom had demonstrated alongside the three, and local law enforcement shot them with “less-lethal” ammunition and smoke canisters. Spokane police and county deputies arrested 31 protesters that night on local charges. A month later, the federal government charged nine people with felony conspiracy. Six took plea deals in December, and most of the local charges against other protesters for failure to disperse were later dropped…