A federal jury has found three protesters, including a US military veteran of the war in Afghanistan, guilty on felony conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a June 2025 protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Legal experts have said the Spokane, Washington, case marked a serious escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on first amendment rights. The demonstrators now face potential sentences of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

They are expected to appeal. All three defendants have also filed a rarely used motion asking US district court judge Rebecca Pennell to set their guilty verdicts aside. The motion, known as Rule 29, allows defense attorneys to argue the prosecution’s evidence is so weak that no rational juror could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“I’m not done. I’m going to keep fighting,” said Bajun Mavalwalla, a former US army sergeant who was among those convicted.

His father, Bajun Ray Mavalwalla, a retired US army intelligence officer with three Bronze Stars earned in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the “verdict sets a precedent for those wishing to disenfranchise people from their rights to speech, expression, and assembly”.

Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and executive director of its Fred T Korematsu Center for Law and Equality called the verdict “frightening”.

“By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy,” he said. “The goal posts keep moving.”

The elder Mavalwalla said he was inspired by his son’s bravery and “unwavering commitment to the beliefs and the principles” he fought for in Afghanistan. Other veterans attended the hearing, offering their support.

The case has drawn national attention. The acting US attorney for Eastern Washington state, Richard Barker, resigned rather than sign the indictment, telling the Guardian: “None of the agents were hurt and none of the protesters were hurt either.”

In February, a federal judge ordered the releaseof a Venezuelan migrant whose transportation for deportation the protesters sought to block, ruling his arrest violated the constitution.

But the jury, drawn from conservative Eastern Washington state, did not hear those facts at trial, thanks to rulings by Judge Pennell. Pennell, a former federal public defender and appointee of Democratic president Joe Biden, also ruled the protesters on trial could not use the first amendment as a defense, though they were allowed to state their reasons for demonstrating.

Instead, the jury watched hours of law enforcement body camera video and heard from a parade of ICE agents, a federal contractor and local law enforcement, one of whom, ICE agent Jared Tomaso, said he was “concerned for the safety of the officers”.

In the midst of the trial, Range, a local media outlet, revealed that Jeremy Burlingame, an ICE agent who testified, had authored social media posts that called Black politicians “lying ghetto garbage” and transgender people “mentally ill”. He boosted a post showing ICE arresting a pregnant woman at gunpoint that called her a “pregnant invader”.

Federal prosecutors deemed the posts troubling enough to recall Burlingame to impeach him, despite the fact that he was their witness. Assistant US attorney Lisa Cartier-Giroux called Burlingame’s posts “horrendous” in open court and said she had notified ICE of his conduct. On the stand, Burlingame acknowledged an investigation was taking place.

But Burlingame’s online posts, the lack of injury to ICE officers, and the absence of evidence showing communication between the three defendants prior to the protest, were not enough to sway the jury.

Approximately 24 hours after the end of closing arguments, they returned with unanimous guilty verdicts against all three defendants.

The decision left a bad taste in the mouth of former acting US attorney Barker.

“I question whether justice was truly served by today’s verdict,” Barker said.

He noted the case represented the first prosecution in Eastern Washington state under 18 USC section 372 – “a Civil War-era law dusted off to punish members of our community who stood up for two young men who were unlawfully detained by ICE.”

Barker said he hoped that in the future “DOJ will focus on the crimes that matter most to keep our families safe and to build trust with the communities that most need and deserve law enforcement protection”.

The guilty verdicts in conservative eastern Washington state stood in contrast to the result of a similar conspiracy case launched by federal prosecutors in Chicago.

On 8 May, justice department officials there agreed to dismiss conspiracy charges brought against protesters at ICE’s Broadview detention facility and instead proceeded to trial on misdemeanor counts.