Early one morning this June, Treasure Thoreson was drinking coffee on her couch in Minneapolis when she heard a knock at the front door.
"I go and I see a woman standing there in office clothes, but with a Homeland Security vest over the top. And I see six more agents standing in my front yard," Thoreson told NPR. "She said, 'We have a warrant for your arrest, for conspiracy.'"
Thoreson, a special education teacher, was still in her pajamas. The agent let her change clothes and hug her partner goodbye before taking her into custody.
The government charged Thoreson and 14 others with engaging in a conspiracy to impede federal agents – a conspiracy it says culminated in the use of blockades outside the Whipple Federal Building, which served as ICE's headquarters during the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota this past winter.
The government cited meetings and conversations on the encrypted messaging app Signal as evidence. At the advice of her lawyer, Thoreson declined to comment on the specifics of the indictment.
An increasing trend
The charges against Thoreson are part of an escalating trend. NPR reviewed court records from the last five years to examine how the federal government is wielding one specific charge: Conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, which can carry a sentence of up to six years in federal prison.
The statute, which dates back to the Civil War, has historically been used infrequently. But since President Trump took office last year, the Justice Department has charged more than three dozen people in at least 10 cases. All of them involve people protesting federal immigration enforcement.
The government has also indicted nearly 50 people on conspiracy charges in Michigan, Texas and Minnesota using different legal statutes.
Before 2025, most of the recent cases using the conspiracy-to-impede statute stemmed from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and involved far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Those cases were either dismissed when Trump took office or when Trump pardoned those who were convicted.
The rise in conspiracy charges has caused some legal experts to worry that the federal government is stretching the bounds of the law to sweep up political activists who oppose the Trump administration's deportation agenda.
"These cases are part of a broader trend that's worth watching," says Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Terr stressed that each of the conspiracy cases is different. Some involve things like property destruction or even violence, which the First Amendment does not protect. The case in Texas, for instance, involved a protester shooting a local police officer, who survived.
"The government can legitimately prosecute people for that. But some defendants aren't accused of personally engaging in that conduct," Terr says. "The concern there is that the government may be casting too wide a net. It may be lumping in innocent people or people who committed minor misdemeanors, based on their political beliefs."
Acts of civil disobedience, or nonviolently breaking certain laws as a form of protest, typically are met with minor charges, such as trespassing, disorderly conduct or failing to disperse.
Conspiracy, however, is more serious. For a conspiracy to occur, Terr says there has to be an agreement among people to commit a crime and, according to the statute involving impeding or injuring an officer, that crime has to prevent the officer from doing their duties through force, intimidation, or threat.
"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," Terr says.
In a statement, the Justice Department told NPR that federal prosecutors are correct to prioritize these cases.
"People should not mistake violence against law enforcement or impeding officers performing their duties with peaceful protest," the statement said.
Convictions in Spokane
Many of the conspiracy cases against ICE protesters have been dismissed or are ongoing, but the Justice Department is having some success.
Last summer in Spokane, Wash., 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.
The day after the protest, the DOJ ordered U.S. attorneys around the country to prioritize prosecuting protesters who destroyed property or assaulted law enforcement, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. A few months later, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo directing U.S. Attorneys in select districts to charge those protesters, as well as people who interfered with law enforcement, "with the highest provable offense available under the law."
After the Spokane protest, Richard Barker, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, initially asked his prosecutors to look into conspiracy charges for the Spokane protesters, but instead of signing an indictment, he resigned.
About a month after the protest, nine people were charged with conspiracy. Barker's successor had signed the indictment.
Six defendants pleaded guilty, but three chose to go to trial, including Jac Archer and Bajun Mavalwalla II.
"At the end of the day. I fundamentally couldn't stomach admitting to doing something I know I didn't do," Archer, a longtime organizer, says of the decision to go to trial.
During the trial in May, prosecutors argued that the defendants entered into a conspiracy the day of the protest to block the vehicle transporting detainees.
"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," Mavalwalla, a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, told NPR.
The government alleged that federal agents feared for their safety that day, and that protesters damaged property, including slashing tires. Archer and Mavalwalla were not accused of that in the indictment.
On the day of the protest, Archer posted a call on social media for others to join, saying some people were choosing to "risk arrest to block the exits to ICE." The federal government cited that post in its indictment. Archer told NPR that any organizer who takes community safety seriously will alert people to that risk before things veer into civil disobedience territory.
All three defendants were found guilty of conspiracy.
"I question whether justice was truly served by today's verdict," Barker, the U.S. Attorney who resigned, told The Guardian at the time, describing the case as "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."
Archer and Mavalwalla's lawyers are exploring next steps, including asking the judge to throw out the verdict, arguing that the evidence was not enough to prove guilt.
"This whole situation is not just beyond my expectations," says Archer, who has attended dozens of protests. "It doesn't align with how I understood things to work."
'An attempt to scare Americans'
Archer and Mavalwalla's story sounds familiar to Joselyn Walsh and Michael Rabbitt. Both were indicted after a protest outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., last September.
On the day in question, video posted on social media shows a federal officer driving toward the group of protesters, and some of them blocking the vehicle.
Prosecutors alleged that some protesters caused damage to it, though Walsh and Rabbitt were not accused of that. They both say they touched the car briefly.
"When you're in a crowd of people that a car drives into, you may end up making contact with that car. But it didn't stick in my mind," says Walsh, a local musician in Chicago.
A month after the incident, Walsh and Rabbitt were charged with conspiracy, along with four others.
"They sought to make an example of us," Rabbitt says, a longtime political activist and the Democratic committeeperson for Chicago's 45th Ward.
This spring, the case against them was dismissed because of alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Even so, Walsh says the experience rattled 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," she says.
Katie Schwartzmann, legal counsel with the organization Protect Democracy, says more indictments against protesters could be coming.
"It's important to see these indictments and the use of this law for what it is, which is an attempt to scare Americans," Schwartzmann says. "But also, Americans should not be afraid to organize peaceful resistance in this moment. Those acts of ordinary people organizing and working together have been the most important force for justice in the history of our country."
NPR's Katie Daugert and Jane Gilvin contributed reporting.
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