This man could go to jail for 20 years for giving migrants food and water
... 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. .. read more..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/10/scott-daniel-warren-migrants-food-water