The Activist Who Helped Migrants In The Desert Was Found Not Guilty

Every year, hundreds of people die as they try to cross the dangerous desert on the U.S./Mexico border. In 2004, a coalition of community and faith groups joined with each other to combat that epidemic and formed No More Deaths, a nonprofit in which volunteers hike 30 to 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico border and leave water, food, socks, blankets, and other supplies for traveling migrants. If they visualize someone in need of medical help, they supply emergency first-aid treatment. In short, they attempt to help anyone and each person they can, without consideration of documentation status.


Yet in January 2018, law enforcement attempted to stop one of these volunteers.


According to the Arizona Day-to-day Star, No More Deaths volunteer Scott Warren was accused of hiding two males from Central America for a number of days at a migrant aid station in Ajo, Arizona, referred to because the Barn. (In a statement provided to MTV News by No More Deaths, Warren noted that “throughout the trial we mistakenly referred to the land surrounding Ajo as a military span, a wilderness, a Border Patrol area of responsibility. Nevertheless it’s O’odham land. All of it.”)


The Arizona geography teacher was arrested, and also the two boys, any time the Barn was raided that January. In June 2019, a jury was deadlocked on costs that Warren was attempting to smuggle the two males across the border. So the prosecutors dropped the conspiracy expenditures, and retried Warren on two harboring costs. On Wednesday (November 20), right after nearly three hours of deliberation, federal court jurors in Tucson, Arizona, noticed him not guilty.


“The government failed in its try to criminalize generic human kindness,” Warren instructed them crowd outdoor the downtown courthouse soon after it was over, BuzzFeed News reported. He continued in a statement offered to MTV News by No More Deaths: “Both in and out of court our work here has been to educate. To explain the complex context of the border with clarity, and to bring a understanding of the humanitarian crisis to those who will listen.”


No More Deaths tweeted that the sort has “withstood the government’s attempts to criminalize generic human compassion.”


During the case, Warren’s defense lawyer, Gregory Kuykendall, mentioned that he was only trying to be a “good Samaritan.”


“Being a good Samaritan isn't illegal. Practicing the golden rule isn't a felony,” Kuykendall instructed them jury, according to the Star.


Nevertheless the fight isn’t over for Warren, who was noticed guilty of illegally operating a motor car in a wilderness area whenever he left aid on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in 2017. He was also charged with littering the refuge with abandoned property, based on No More Deaths's policy of planting resources for migrants, however the judge acquitted him of that misdemeanor count. He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 18, 2020, the Star reported.


“Let’s all take a deep breath, get some rest, and be ready for — and open to — whichever comes next,” Warren said.