The Guardian reports:

The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan.

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 a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington.

Legal experts say the case marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights. Afghanistan war veterans who know him say the case against Mavalwalla appears unjust.

“Here’s a guy who held a top secret clearance and was privy to some of the most sensitive information we have, who served in a combat zone,” said Kenneth Koop, a retired colonel who trained the Afghan military and police during Mavalwalla’s deployment. “To see him treated like this really sticks in my craw.”

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

The 35-year-old, who used his GI Bill to earn a degree in sustainable communities from Sonoma State University, was set to move into a 3,000-sq-ft house that day, which he had bought with his girlfriend, a nurse and fellow Afghanistan war veteran, with the help of a loan backed by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mavalwalla’s father, a retired US army intelligence officer with three bronze stars earned during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, brought his truck for the occasion. He planned to move his son into a dream home in a bucolic, southern section of Spokane that was large enough to accommodate their blended family (Mavalwalla has one child; his girlfriend, Katelyn Gaston, has three) and solidify the couple’s life together.

But at 6am the FBI knocked on Mavalwalla’s door and they arrested him. Cell phone video shot by Mavalwalla’s father shows the veteran – tall, fit, with wire-rimmed glasses, tight ponytail and trim goatee – smiling in apparent disbelief, his hands shackled behind his back.

“This is not how I planned to spend my moving day,” Mavalwalla says, as agents search his pockets and force him into a black pickup truck. “I’m a military veteran. I’m an American citizen.” [Continue reading…]