Arizona border aid volunteer acquitted
Warren was accused of harboring 2 migrants
TUCSON — Jurors found humanitarian aid volunteer Scott Warren not guilty Wednesday of intentionally harboring and concealing two undocumented migrants from the Border Patrol in the remote Arizona desert.
In one of the highestprofile cases testing the legal limits of humanitarian work along the U.S.-Mexico border, Warren, a longtime volunteer with the aid group No More Deaths, faced up to 20 years in prison. It was his second trial this year stemming from his January 2018 arrest in Ajo, about 100 miles southwest
of Phoenix.
The 12-person jury in Tucson took just more than two hours to reach a not guilty verdict, striking a blow to prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona who sought a conviction against Warren after the first trial ended in a hung jury in June.
“The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,” Warren told jubilant supporters outside the federal courthouse. “Whatever today’s outcome had been, our preparation and commitment has impacted change.
“Everyone here did diligent, detailed and amazing work,” he said, referring to his two attorneys, Greg Kuykendall and Amy Knight, standing next to him as he addressed the crowd.
Warren declined to answer whether, after his acquittal, he would return to the Arizona desert to continue providing humanitarian aid to migrants in the Ajo area.
Border agents had arrested Warren, along with two undocumented migrants, Jose Sacaria-Godoy and Kristian Perez-Villanueva, on Jan. 17, 2018, in a building No More Deaths uses as a staging ground for water drop-offs in the desert known as “the Barn.”
Prosecutors had accused Warren of intentionally shielding the two migrants to help them avoid Border Patrol detection and providing them directions to bypass a nearby checkpoint.
Warren’s attorneys argued in court that Warren was motivated solely by his humanitarian principles to “prevent suffering and death” in the Arizona desert.
“Scott Warren did what all of us should aspire to do: He risked his freedom, he risked his livelihood and he risked his future. All in order to help strangers in distress,” Kuykendall told supporters outside the courthouse.
Michael Bailey, the new U.S. attorney for Arizona, was in attendance in court on Wednesday morning for the closing arguments in the sixth day of the trial.
Bailey expressed his disappointment with the jury’s verdict, but said that it wouldn’t deter his office from continuing to prosecute harboring and trafficking cases, even if it involves humanitarian aid volunteers.
“We won’t distinguish between whether somebody is trafficking or harboring for money or whether they’re doing it out of I would say a misguided sense of social justice or belief in open borders or whatever,” Bailey said. “Whatever the reason, if you’re harboring or trafficking, we will prosecute when the case comes in.”
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Gothat doy were not in need of medical assistance when they sought shelter in the Barn. As evidence, they presented a series of smiling selfies the two men took before and during their stay at the Barn.
“It’s almost like they’re on a vacation,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Walters said.
By allowing the two men to stay for several days, prosecutors accused Warren of intentionally harboring them in an effort to give them a better chance of continuing their illegal entry into the United States.
As U.S. District Judge Raner Collins read the verdict inside the Tucson courtroom on Wednesday, some Warren supporters gasped in relief while others broke down in tears of joy.
Once the jury left the courtroom, Collins issued a ruling on a separate misdemeanor case that Warren also faced, arising from his volunteer work with No More Deaths in the Arizona desert.
He acquitted Warren on one count of abandonment of property for leaving behind water gallons for thirsty migrants inside protected wilderness boundaries of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. The judge cited Warren’s religious beliefs that had compelled him to carry out humanitarian work.
But Collins also found Warren guilty of a second count of operating a motor vehicle on a restricted road inside the refuge. He set a sentencing hearing for
misdemeanor for Feb. 18.
Outside the courthouse, Warren’s supporters hugged and laughed as they celebrated his acquittal.
Geena Jackson, another volunteer with No More Deaths, talked about the two other men at the center of the trial, Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Godoy.
“Their intentions and actions have been deliberated over and over again, pictures of their faces and their bodies have been flashed in this courthouse over and over again, and that was wrong,” she said.
Prosecutors had offered both migrants immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony in the trial. After they taped their depositions, the U.S. government deported both PerezVillanueva and Sacaria-Godoy back to El Salvador and Honduras respectively.
The Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, CEO and president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, welcomed the jury’s decision. The Unitarian Universalist Church is the religious affiliate of No More Deaths.
“The verdict is a sharp and welcome rebuke to the administration’s ongoing effort to criminalize compassion — and marks a major victory for all of the humanitarian workers willing to risk their own lives to save those of others,” she said in a written statement.