Members of desert aid team convicted

During the summer of 2017, when temperatures reached triple digits in Arizona, four women drove to a vast desert wilderness along the southwestern border with Mexico.

They brought water jugs and canned food – items they later said they were leaving for dehydrated migrants crossing the unfriendly terrain to get to the United States.

The women were later charged with misdemeanour crimes. Prosecutors said they violated federal law by entering Cabeza Prieta, a protected 348,000 ha refuge, without a permit and leaving water and food there.

A judge convicted them last week in the latest example of growing tension between aid workers and the US Border Patrol. Aid workers say their humanitarian efforts, motivated by a deep sense of right and wrong, have been criminalised during the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings. Federal officials say they were simply enforcing the law.

The four women, all volunteers for the Arizona-based aid group No More Deaths, were convicted after a three-day bench trial at a federal court in Tucson. They could face up to six months in federal prison.

Their trial coincided with a partial government shutdown now nearing its 30th day, the longest in the country’s history.

In his verdict order, federal magistrate Judge Bernardo Velasco said the women’s actions violated ‘‘the national decision to maintain the Refuge in its pristine nature.’’

Velasco also said the women committed the crimes believing, falsely, that they would not be prosecuted and, instead, would simply be banned or fined.

Catherine Gaffney, a volunteer for No More Deaths, said the guilty verdict challenges all ‘‘people of conscience throughout the country.’’

‘‘If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?’’ she said.