Since President Trump took office last year, the Justice Department has charged more than three dozen people in at least 10 cases under a Civil War-era conspiracy statute, and every one of those cases grew out of a protest against immigration enforcement. The number comes from NPR, which reviewed court records from the last five years to examine how the federal government is wielding one specific charge [1].

The charge is conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, 18 U.S.C. 372. It can carry a sentence of up to six years in federal prison. NPR reports the statute dates to the Civil War and has historically been used infrequently [1].

Early one morning this June, agents arrived at the Minneapolis home of Treasure Thoreson, a special education teacher. "I go and I see a woman standing there in office clothes, but with a Homeland Security vest over the top," she told NPR, describing "six more agents standing in my front yard." The agents told her, "We have a warrant for your arrest, for conspiracy" [1].

Thoreson and 14 others were charged in a case the government says culminated in the use of blockades outside the Whipple Federal Building, after protests this past winter. Prosecutors cited meetings and conversations on the encrypted messaging app Signal as evidence [1]. On the advice of her lawyer, Thoreson declined to discuss the specifics of the indictment [1].

What the statute asks a jury to find

A conspiracy charge does not ask whether the defendant did the thing. It asks whether the defendant agreed that it be done. As NPR describes the elements, there has to be an agreement among people to commit a crime, and under this particular statute that crime has to prevent an officer from doing their duties through force, intimidation, or threat [1].

The physical act belongs to the group. An individual defendant's contribution can be the agreement itself. That distinction is not academic, because it decides who ends up standing in the courtroom.

Spokane

Last summer in Spokane, Washington, protesters gathered outside a building where federal immigration officers were holding two immigrants. Some linked arms and tried to block a van from moving the detainees to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. Local police used pepper balls to disperse the crowd and arrested about 30 people [1].

Nine were charged with conspiracy. Six pleaded guilty. Three went to trial in May, and all three were found guilty [1]. Two of those three, Jac Archer and Bajun Mavalwalla II, spoke to NPR. Neither was accused of damaging property [1].

Archer turned down a plea: "I fundamentally couldn't stomach admitting to doing something I know I didn't do" [1].

Mavalwalla put the exposure in plain terms: "Being charged with a federal felony, a conspiracy charge that holds the potential for six years in prison because I showed up to a protest, seems to me to be an attack on a fundamental right that all Americans hold" [1].

Broadview

Joselyn Walsh and Michael Rabbitt were indicted after a September protest in Broadview, Illinois. This spring the case against them was dismissed because of alleged prosecutorial misconduct [1].

Walsh described what the process taught her: "I think that what I've learned through this experience is just how much power the federal government really has over our lives and our liberty" [1].

The department's line, taken seriously

The Justice Department told NPR: "People should not mistake violence against law enforcement or impeding officers performing their duties with peaceful protest" [1].

That sentence deserves to be read as written. Blocking a federal transport van is conduct, not speech, and the Spokane facts as NPR reports them include people linking arms to stop a vehicle from moving. The statute reaches force, intimidation, and threat on its face, not opinions about immigration enforcement. The Broadview dismissal is evidence that the process still contains a check on prosecutors who overreach. The count NPR published is also narrower than it could have been made to look: the more-than-three-dozen figure tracks this one charge, while the government has separately indicted nearly 50 more people on conspiracy charges in Michigan, Texas and Minnesota under different statutes, which NPR keeps out of the Section 372 tally [1].

What the department's sentence does not answer is the question the Spokane verdicts raise. Two people there now carry federal felony convictions for conspiracy, and no one alleged that they broke anything.

Aaron Terr, a director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, put the problem at the moment of agreement: "If someone shows up to a protest and they're prepared to engage in civil disobedience or they spontaneously decide, I'm going to join this line of people who's blocking this detainee transport, I don't think that's enough to show a criminal conspiracy" [1].

Katie Schwartzmann of Protect Democracy read the pattern as its own message: "It's important to see these indictments and the use of this law for what it is, which is an attempt to scare Americans" [1].

What a conspiracy count changes

Three things move when a protest case is charged as federal conspiracy.

The exposure moves. Six years in federal prison is the ceiling on this charge, and it attaches to people whose arrests at the scene, where there were arrests at the scene, were handled by local police [1].

The evidence moves. A trespass or property case turns on what a camera recorded at the scene. A conspiracy case turns on planning, and planning lives in meetings and messages. The Minneapolis indictment cites Signal conversations [1].

The arithmetic of showing up moves. Thoreson is one of 15 people charged in a single Minneapolis case, and nine were charged in Spokane out of roughly 30 people arrested [1]. A conspiracy count is a charge that scales with the size of the group rather than with the conduct of the individual.

NPR's account does not describe bail terms, pretrial release conditions, or the sentences imposed on the three convicted in Spokane. Those remain open on the public record as reported.

The ledger

A special education teacher in Minneapolis is answering a federal indictment that carries up to six years, built in part on encrypted messages [1]. Two people in Spokane already carry conspiracy convictions that nobody paired with an allegation of property damage [1]. Two more in Illinois spent months as federal defendants before a judge dismissed the case over alleged prosecutorial misconduct [1].

The department says the line is violence and impeding officers, not peaceful protest. The record as NPR counted it is more than three dozen defendants across at least 10 cases under one Civil War-era statute, every case at an immigration protest [1].