Hundreds Protested Against This Venezuelan’s Detention by ICE. Now He’s Free After Seven Months
Case continues against those who protested Joswar Torres’s arrest, with prosecutors seeking six years’ imprisonment
Rich Barker, a partner at Singleton Schreiber, was mentioned in The Guardian’s article, “Hundreds Protested Against This Venezuelan’s Detention by ICE. Now He’s Free After Seven Months,” published on February 9, 2026.
The article mentions Barker’s previous role as acting U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington, where he chose not to sign indictments against protesters and later resigned. Now at Singleton Schreiber, he works on civil rights cases, including lawsuits about law enforcement tactics during protests.
The article discusses legal issues with immigration detention, First Amendment rights, and how prosecutors use their discretion. It also covers a federal court’s finding of due process violations in an ICE detention case and looks at how protest-related prosecutions and federal use of force are being examined more closely.
“No one was hurt,” Barker said. “You have people who were executing their rights to free speech. You have people who were seeing an injustice and they were saying something about it.”
