|
Acts of Charity or Illegal Activity?
The Wired Word for the Week of June 9, 2019
In the News
College professor Scott Warren, 36, went on trial in Tucson, Arizona, on Wednesday, May 29, charged with two counts of harboring illegal aliens and one count of conspiracy to transport and harbor, which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Previously, Warren was tried on misdemeanor charges of operating a vehicle in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and abandoning property, which consisted of water jugs. A verdict has not yet been rendered in that trial. The charges stem from Warren's 2018 arrest with El Salvadoran Kristian Perez-Villanueva and Honduran Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Godoy, who arrived in the sleepy town of Ajo, Arizona, 40 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, after entering the United States illegally.
Someone suggested the migrants might get help at a small structure called "The Barn" on the edge of the former copper company town. That's where they met Warren, a volunteer with No More Deaths, a Universalist Unitarian Church ministry that seeks to prevent needless loss of life of migrants in remote Arizona wilderness areas by providing food, water, clothing, shelter and medical care.
Some view Warren's arrest as retaliation for a well-documented report No More Deaths issued hours earlier, charging Border Patrol agents with "regular and widespread destruction of water supplies with little or no consequences." Border control agents characterize Warren as the lynchpin of a criminal conspiracy that facilitates the unlawful entry of migrants into the country. On his podcast, Tucson-based host Art Del Cueto described Warren as a "crybaby activist" … and … "illegal alien harborer." According to Del Cueto, No More Deaths volunteers were "making it easier for these individuals to commit a crime."
Ten years ago, Warren chose as the topic of his doctoral dissertation "the most persisting and controversial question of this place: 'Who belongs here and who does not?'" Four years later, he read this line in the local newspaper: "Recovered dead body in the desert." Intrigued, he began to research what that statement meant. He connected with search and recovery teams, and in the years since, personally discovered 18 corpses.
Experts believe that more than 7,000 people, or at least 350 a year, have lost their lives in the Arizona wilderness in the past 20 years.
In the mid-1990s, the federal government introduced a border policy known as "prevention through deterrence." The theory behind that strategy was that by disrupting traditional smuggling routes and making it more difficult to come into the country through traditional ports of entry, illicit traffic would be "deterred or forced over more hostile terrain," thus discouraging would-be migrants, drug and human traffickers from attempting the journey.
During the 1990s, Pima County averaged 12 migrant deaths a year. During the 18 years since 2000, when the new policy was implemented, Pima County has averaged 155 migrant deaths a year, most from dehydration or exposure. Since Warren's arrest in 2018, the remains of at least 167 more migrants have been recovered in Arizona.
Warren testified about the trauma of living in Ajo at his misdemeanor trial: "We are surrounded by that death in our town. … The entire desert is a sacred place. It's a graveyard. When you think of how tiny our town is, and when you think of the number of bodies that were recovered last year -- like 58 or 60 bodies that were recovered here -- I can't imagine that happening in any town in our country and not having people be up in arms," said Mimi Phillips, an Ajo volunteer with the humanitarian group Samaritan. "When that starts to sink in, you have to do something. You don't want to be a cemetery. These are human lives."
Retired Ajo physician Carol Johnson, who in 2014 opened her five-acre plot of land on which "The Barn" sits as a kind of humanitarian way station, said, "No matter what your crime is or whatever else we might think you have done wrong, that's not an excuse for letting you die in the desert. I'm a doctor. We try not to let people die."
More than 4,500 people were federally charged for bringing in and harboring migrants in 2018, according to TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That is more than a 30 percent uptick since 2015, most occurring after an April 11, 2017, memo from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, calling for the prioritization of prosecuting harboring cases and the "disruption of organizations" that provide humanitarian aid to the undocumented.
"With these prosecutions, the government is saying, 'we're extending our zero tolerance policy to good Samaritans,'" said Ranjana Natarajan, director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. Natarajan characterized the government view as "People shouldn't be helping migrants even if they might be at threat of death." Others might characterize the government view as "People shouldn't help others commit crimes, and should couple any immediate human aid with a call to law enforcement to apprehend the criminals."
"It is life or death here. And a decision not to give somebody food or water could lead to that person dying," Warren said. He said his work with migrants is a "spiritual calling" protected by the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that the government has no right to criminalize his religious beliefs that require him to help people in distress. Warren's father, Mark, a former Peace Corps volunteer, testified in court that his son's desire to help those in need is "based on his deep faith."
Warren's defense attorney Gregory Kuykendall said his client and other volunteers for No More Deaths are involved in search and rescue to save lives, and recovery missions to give families of people who died in the desert a chance to mourn. Catherine Gaffney, another volunteer for No More Deaths, said "If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?"
The Rev. Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre, author and Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at the Iliff School of Theology, wrote that "Warren had the audacity to take the words of Jesus [in Matthew 25] literally, 'For I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me to drink, an alien and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you ministered to me.' ... We are a nation that has made humanitarian aid a crime and has made fidelity to the Bible a felony."
More on this story can be found at these links:
Bodies in the Borderland. The Intercept
Arizona Volunteer Tried on Felony Charges for Helping Immigrants. Courthouse News ServiceExtending 'Zero Tolerance' to People Who Help Migrants Along the Border. NPR
4 Arizona Women Convicted for Leaving Water for Migrants. TIME
The Big Questions
1. How do you understand the relationship of your faith to your politics?
2. What do you suppose motivates Warren and other volunteers like him? What do you suppose motivates those who oppose his actions? Might there be kind and charitable people on both sides of this issue? Explain.
3. If, in your view, government is not living up to its responsibilities, or enacts unjust and harmful policies and practices, what action, if any, should you as a Christian take, and why?
4. Have you, or would you, ever leave a church because it engaged, or did not engage, in political activism about issues that are important to you? Why or why not?
5. What would you do if the government criminalized some behavior you consider central to your faith and how you practice it?
Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
Luke 10:30, 33-35
Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ... But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.'" (For context, read 10:25-37.)
When a lawyer questioned Jesus about how to inherit eternal life, Jesus invited him to consider what the scripture teaches. When the lawyer did so, he was able to answer correctly that the person who wants to inherit eternal life should love God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, and love his neighbor as himself (v. 27).
But the lawyer was not satisfied. Perhaps he was looking for a loophole, to find out the extent to which he was duty-bound to love others, and whether he could pick and choose which people to love, according to his whims, or tribe, or some other arbitrary measurement of the worth of different people. So he asked Jesus to define the meaning of the word "neighbor" (v. 29). Thus, the telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
No doubt the priest and the Levite who passed the injured man by (vv. 31-32) felt justified in doing so, but the Samaritan was of a different mindset. He risked his own safety and put his own resources on the line to render aid to the man who might well have died without his help.
Questions: Would you read this parable differently if Warren were the Samaritan, assisting undocumented migrants in a border town in southern Arizona? Explain.
Luke 13:14-16
But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" (For context, read 13:10-17.)
Once when Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, he healed a woman who had been crippled for 18 years, causing her to praise God and making the entire crowd rejoice (vv. 10-13, 17). But not everyone was happy with Jesus' act of mercy. The leader of the synagogue was furious with Jesus for curing the woman at the wrong time, since according to his understanding of scripture, healing constituted work that was not to be done on the Sabbath. He also found fault with the crippled woman, for not seeking help at the right time, in the appropriate way. After all, if she could bear her lameness for 18 years, why couldn't she bear it one more day?
But Jesus has little patience for this kind of thinking. "You show more mercy to your animals by working for them on the Sabbath, providing them with water, yet you don't think this woman, a daughter of Abraham, should be set free from 18 long years of bondage as soon as possible? What better day for her liberation than the Sabbath?"
Questions: What does this passage imply about the nature of God? Are religious rules important to God? Does God care more about our religion, or the loving actions our religions (or lack thereof) compel us toward?
Acts 4:8-10, 19-20
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. ... But Peter and John answered them, "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard." (For context, read 4:8-21.)
Peter and John met a man lame from birth at the temple, and healed him in the name of Jesus (Acts 3:1-8). The religious leaders, annoyed that they were preaching about the risen Christ, had them arrested (4:1-7). The next day, they brought Peter and John before the council to give an account of their actions. Peter went right to the heart of the issue: For some reason, the rulers of the people were upset "because of a good deed done to someone who was sick" (v. 9), who was healed by the name of Christ. So they ordered Peter and John not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus any more (v. 18), but this the apostles indicated they were not prepared to do.
Some of the No More Deaths volunteers who were tried for providing humanitarian aid to migrants were ordered by the judge presiding over their cases to cease and desist, but they replied in much the same way that Peter and John did in this passage, that they could not comply with the judge's order, but would keep doing what they believed their faith called them to do. The humanitarian workers were released, as were Peter and John, although people who stand up for what they believe in and do what they think is right do not always escape without paying a price for their actions.
Questions: How could anyone be upset about the fact that a man lame from birth is finally healed after more than 40 years (v. 22)? What was it about Peter's actions and message that particularly vexed the religious leaders?
Where is the line between one's responsibility to submit to civic or religious authorities and one's duty to obey a higher law?
Where did Peter and John get the courage to stand up to the religious leaders? How can you build up strength and courage to resist powerful forces that pressure you to stop following the way of Christ?
|
