From the mid-1970s the government wielded the federal grand jury against the independence movement's aboveground supporters — subpoenaing organizers, churchworkers, and family members to testify about the FALN and Macheteros, and jailing those who refused for civil and criminal contempt. María Cueto and Raisa Nemikin of the Episcopal Church's Hispanic commission served ten months in 1977; a 1983 wave imprisoned Julio Rosado and his brothers; in all, dozens of independentistas — and their North American allies — served terms without ever being accused of a crime.

The movement built noncollaboration into a principle: the resisters were honored as prisoners of the same war, and the tactic's costs fell on the state as refusals held. Grand juries returned in 2000s Hartford and as late as 2011 against aging Macheteros supporters — met by the same refusal, now three generations deep.