This man could go to jail for 20 years for giving migrants food and water

[G_j]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/10/scott-daniel-warren-migrants-food-water?CMP=share_btn_fb

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Scott Daniel Warren did no more than give bare necessities to migrants trekking through the desert. Why is he on trial?

Fri 10 May 2019 08.53 EDT

Donald Trump claims his administration’s heavy-handed immigration policies make us safer. But a criminal trial in Arizona this week shows that, in the Trump era, safety has lost its meaning. Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against activist Scott Daniel Warren for doing nothing more than giving food, water and shelter to migrants trekking through the desert. The stakes are high for Warren and for everyone concerned about unrestrained border policing.

Since the days of Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, the justice department has feverishly pursued migrants. In April 2017, Sessions stood before Customs and Border Protection officers in southern Arizona, part of the federal Department of Homeland Security, and described macabre machete attacks and beheadings supposedly perpetrated by migrants. “Criminal aliens, and the coyotes and the document-forgers seek to overturn our system of lawful immigration,” he said. To show the frontline DHS law enforcement officers that the justice department is on their side, Sessions issued a memo to prosecutors asking them to ramp up prosecution of five federal crimes about immigration.

A few months later, prosecutors charged Warren with several counts of one of those offenses, conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants. A federal felony that could land Warren in prison for 20 years, prosecutors rarely tap this charge. Even Sessions appeared to recognize that harboring cases are not big-ticket items. His April 2017 memo, which is still in force despite Trump ushering him out of the justice department, recommends targeting people who helped at least three people or where someone was injured. Prosecutors aren’t alleging either against Warren.

Instead, court records paint him as saintly. Border patrol agents, prosecutors claim, saw Warren arrive at a remote desert location called “the Barn”. There he encountered two people fitting the description of “lost illegal aliens”. The two men, both of whom allegedly entered the United States clandestinely, didn’t know Warren and he didn’t help them get to the Barn. But once he met them there, Warren is said to have given them “food, water, beds, and clean clothes” for three days. Federal prosecutors don’t allege anything more sinister.

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[MyOwnPeace]

1. Not to worry..........

our "Christian" Republicans will step in to save the day:

Matthew 25:35-37 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
"35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?"


Maybe Falwell or Graham will come running in to end this mess............... or maybe even St. Pence.................

[Danascot]

2. If Jesus came back today

the GOP would have him in jail within a week.

[pdsimdars]

3. our whole system is being turned upside down and has been going that way for years

and they all just let it slide so as not to make waves.

[kacekwl]

4. If this man spends one minute in jail or

charged one penny in fines it will prove to me there is no God. If God did exist all involved would be struck down immediately. Nevermind, those responsible for taking kids and locking them in cages are still walking the earth.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. After all the shit we've pulled around the world in the last couple of decades

I'm pretty sure that if there were a god, there would be no Americans.

[kacekwl]

8. True, although

so much was hidden from us or sadly we looked the other way.

[IronLionZion]

5. our Christian conservatives would turn away Jesus, Mary, and Joseph from the manger

and jail the manger keeper for giving aid and comfort to the enemy

Nonwhites are the enemy to many racists. That's why they use war language like "invasion" and want people to die.

A single agency, the Pima county medical examiner, recovered the dead bodies of 2,615 migrants from 2001 to 2016 in this stretch of Arizona. More lives are certainly lost without anyone finding their remains.

[paleotn]

6. Sounds too me like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850....

Those who did the Christian thing by giving runaways aid and shelter were subject fines and imprisonment. Sometimes I think we're living the second stanza of that same old song, and like the 1850's, with a breakup just around the corner. Maybe we should be more prescient and build the wall across the Mid West and North East instead of the Mexican border. Not to keep out Latinos by any means, but our wayward, former fellow citizens who finally see the error in their ways when the new confederacy goes full on theocracy.

[smirkymonkey]

9. What a country. Where someone can get 20 years for helping their fellow

human beings, but someone who rapes an 11 year old child gets off scot-free. It makes me sick. I really hate this world sometimes.