UA professor faced decades in prison for aid work at the border. He says it's a 'sacred act'

LAUREN GILGER: In January of 2018, University of Arizona professor Scott Warren was volunteering in the southern Arizona desert with humanitarian aid group No More Deaths.

He had worked with them for years leaving out jugs of water, food and first aid kits on known migrant trails and, helping migrants at what was called “the Barn” — a humanitarian aid station in Ajo, about 40 miles north of the border.

Then, on Jan. 17, Warren was arrested for harboring two migrants from Central America who had been staying at the barn.

It was an escalation of actions that had long been going on on the border under the first Trump administration, when federal opposition toward border humanitarian aid was ramping up.

And Warren — a then-37-year-old geography professor at University of Arizona — was right in the middle of it.

He was facing up to 20 years in prison. But, by the next year, he was acquitted by a federal jury in Tucson.

TV REPORTER: We are following some breaking news in the case of a border activist accused of harboring migrants. A jury has found Dr. Scott Warren not guilty. He was acquitted on all charges, which includes those two felony counts of harboring a migrant. Today is a very exciting day for him and his supporters.

LAUREN GILGER: His lawyers argued that humanitarian aid was not illegal even if the migrants they were helping were undocumented and that Warren’s actions were guided by his religious beliefs.

Today, Warren sees it all in a new light. He recently spoke at Arizona State University about spirituality, migration and moral courage.

I spoke with Warren more about what the experience looks like to him in the rear view mirror nearly a decade later and under a new Trump era. And it's today's Deep Dive.

SCOTT WARREN: The day I was arrested, I had actually a few days before that been sort of served with a misdemeanor prosecution notice for work we'd been doing in putting out water on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. So a lot of things were kind of happening in that regard in terms of the Border Patrol and sort of land managers' stance towards border humanitarian aid.

But unbeknownst to us at that time, the Border Patrol was also surveying a property in Ajo called the Barn, which has served as a kind of base camp for various humanitarian aid groups in that area. And we'd been providing humanitarian aid to two men from Central America who had done the whole crossing of Central America and Mexico and found their way into Ajo.

And Border Patrol saw me talking to these two men and essentially determined that they were in the country illegally and they came in and they did a raid on the Barn and they arrested me and they arrested the two men from Central America and I was charged with the federal crime of harboring for having provided, in the arrest information they said that I had provided food, water, beds, and clean clothes to those two men over the course of three days.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. Do you know what happened to those two men?

SCOTT WARREN: I don't know, no. They were deposed in the case and then they were deported.

LAUREN GILGER: It's interesting how your paths crossed in that very fateful moment. I mean, were you surprised at the time? Things had been ramping up, this was under the first Trump administration, as you said you had been served misdemeanor charges for this kind of stuff, but this is work that humanitarian aid group workers like you had been doing for a long time on the border, right?

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, you know, I would say I was definitely surprised to be arrested, wasn't expecting that by any means, though not surprised by the kind of general stance of the federal government at that time towards border humanitarian aid. You know, and that had been made pretty clear by the attorney general at that time and other kinds of policies and I think, you know, we've seen some of those more aggressive enforcement policies really, really play out all across the country, you know, in the current administration.

But at that time the signal was clearly coming that like anybody who was helping somebody who was a migrant or undocumented in any way, including giving somebody water or food or clean clothes or something or even providing legal assistance or anything like that, that those folks might also be targeted in some kind of way. So, you know, we knew the general context.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, you were acquitted a year or so later, but it was a long time, a long process, a big fight, lots of press coverage, you became the face of this kind of fight in a lot of ways.

Did you feel like at the time you were in peril of losing this and ending up serving time in a real way? Did you feel like you were a martyr? Did you feel like you were glad maybe to be in that case to be able to fight it and represent what you felt was important?

SCOTT WARREN: Oh, that's a great question. I wasn't glad to be in that situation by any means, I would say, but, you know, I think all of us, I was the defendant but so many other people were involved and so many folks have been doing that work and the two men who were arrested with me were deported. So there was a larger sort of movement there, a larger community and, yeah, as the defendant I had this pretty interesting role in all of that.

And so I was aware also of the opportunity that it created and also, yeah, the danger potentially or the possibility, but that's where I think all the people who supported me and my pro bono lawyers and all the folks in No More Deaths and other volunteers and family and loved ones who were navigating so much so that I would not be completely overwhelmed and could actually, you know, navigate and make decisions and all that.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And as we mentioned, this centered around religious convictions of your own and the case was partially argued on religious freedom grounds. Tell us about those religious convictions; some of the groups you work with are explicitly religious groups. Was this religiously motivated for you, this work?

SCOTT WARREN: Spiritually, yes. And this is where the details of how this works as a legal defense are quite interesting. There also is a law in the U.S. called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sort of has this broad framework that creates a kind of additional hurdle you could say for prosecutors who are trying a case. Where if somebody's actions were deemed to be against the law and prosecutors are then going to prosecute that person, well the Religious Freedom Restoration Act comes into play and there can be additional hurdles for the prosecutors to have to jump, so to speak.

LAUREN GILGER: So is this about you say a spiritual belief system as opposed to a strictly religious one? What are those beliefs? Like is this just in the sacredness of human life?

SCOTT WARREN: It is, yeah. It stems from my experiences in doing this work for many years and particularly where we did use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act defense was in the misdemeanor charges where we had been charged with the abandonment of property for putting water out in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

Which is an area where many people had died there, many migrants had died there and have continued to die in that area and at the time in particular we were involved in many of those recoveries of the people who had died.

And so for me personally going out there and putting water out was not just a humanitarian concern, of course that was a major part of it, but also had this spiritual aspect of actually just honoring those who had come through that space and people had died in that place and it made it a very kind of sacred place as well.

And, you know, this is wildlife refuge but it is Indigenous land, it's O'odham land, it's ... O'odham land, like it already holds a sacredness for so many people of that place so this is certainly not like a new concept that places could have a kind of sacred quality to them or doing this sort of thing would also be a sacred act. But my experience directly came from doing that work and having been involved in so many of those recoveries over the years.

LAUREN GILGER: And you're still doing that work today in Ajo, I understand. I wonder what it looks like now, especially in comparison to some of the peaks in border crossings that we've seen over the past, you know, decade or two that you've been there.

The border is I know significantly quieter today under the second Trump administration, but what are you seeing?

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, we all are still doing humanitarian aid work in the borderlands and around Ajo and other parts of southern Arizona, so that all continues and water is being drunk and we know that people are walking through that desert still.

But, yeah, I think like everybody else our understanding is there's generally fewer people making that crossing, but people are still making that crossing.

LAUREN GILGER: So I wonder, I mean it strikes me that you won that case, you did not go to prison, you were able to continue doing the work that you're still doing today. But I wonder what it feels like now especially in light of what we're seeing across the country today in terms of immigration enforcement and the crackdown that we've seen from the Trump administration. It has extended far beyond the border.

SCOTT WARREN: That's right. And so some of the nuances of the legal case are important here because and while we did use a Religious Freedom Restoration Act defense in those misdemeanors, we didn't need to use one in the felony case where I was being charged for harboring, which was the one that actually would have carried potential prison time.

And the reason for that is because the jury said it's not a crime to give somebody food, water, clean clothes, and a place to sleep as we did. And so I'm not a lawyer and I'm not giving any kind of legal advice to listeners for sure, but I think this is something really important and of course informs the kinds of things that are happening today where I think you have an administration that's willing to use all kinds of intimidation factors and would probably like people to assume that certain kinds of things are a crime or against the law, but in reality that's not the case in many instances.

LAUREN GILGER: And because of you.

SCOTT WARREN: Well, you know, I mean I think my case because it had such a high profile certainly played a role in that. Yeah, so, we'll take the win in that regard.

But like I said many other people and folks have been like navigating this stuff for many, many years, long before there was ever a No More Deaths or a Samaritans group, and people in the borderlands of this place, Indigenous and local people that have been like providing humanitarian aid and living this issue just in everyday life.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I want to ask you lastly about something that you have said that there's a difference between intellectually knowing that this is, you know, something you believe in, that it's a good thing to serve migrants in the desert, it's protected, it's not illegal, that kind of thing.

But then there's a difference between that intellectual knowledge and then living it. What do you think about having lived through it?

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, I mean it provides a whole set of experiences and perspectives through which to sort of understand this work and myself and my relationship to this place. So, it's everything.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, we'll leave it there. Scott Warren, a geographer and border humanitarian aid worker, joining us from Ajo. Scott, thank you very much for this conversation, thanks for coming on, I appreciate it.

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, you're welcome, thank you.