Thread by @rdevro

Thousands of migrants have died in Arizona's desert. I spent a year reporting on aid volunteers whose efforts to save lives put them in the government’s crosshairs.

One, Scott Warren, faces 20 years in prison — he’s telling his story for the first time. theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-…

This account is based on hours of conversation with Warren, a year’s worth of court filings, hundreds of pages of internal government communications, numerous trips into the Sonoran Desert and interviews with priests, anarchists, former Border Patrol agents and many others.

Scott Warren’s first trial begins Monday, the second is scheduled for May 29.

His case reflects both the most aggressive action the administration has taken against humanitarian aid providers, and the extension of a fight that began decades ago theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-…

Cosigned. This project would not have been possible w/out @_LSaunders_, @azambelich, @RogerDHodge, @lavrentia, @rashmee_kumar, @atrejones, @philipphubert and a whole bunch of other brilliant people

https://twitter.com/azambelich/status/1124653117100969984

NEW: No More Deaths trial opens as more bodies discovered along Arizona-Mexico border interc.pt/2JMVJPd

The first of two trials for a humanitarian aid volunteer accused of breaking the law by providing water — what the government considers littering — in areas of the Arizona desert where migrants are known to die was held in Tucson last week.

theintercept.com/2019/05/14/no-…

As Warren went to trial, humanitarian volunteers were searching for a migrant missing on the same remote stretch of desert were his alleged offenses took place.

While the testimony unfolded, the volunteers found one set of human remains after another. theintercept.com/2019/05/14/no-…

In court, prosecutors painted the case against Warren as open and shut. Warren’s defense team argued that this prosecution was about something bigger.

“Scott knows where the bodies are,” his lawyer said.

While Warren’s attorneys argued that his prosecution amounted to a violation of Warren’s religious freedom rights, government attorneys said his work was not just spiritual but political, and called into question the emergency he and other humanitarian volunteers work to address.

As Dr. Gregory Hess, a forensic pathologist and Pima County’s chief medical examiner, testified, a minimum of 3,000 migrants have died in the Sonoran Desert in the last decade and a half.

“The fact that this emergency has been going on for more than a decade doesn’t make it any less of an emergency,”Catherine Gaffney, a longtime No More Deaths volunteer, testified. “It just makes it more of tragedy.”

The trial ended Thursday. A decision is expected at the end of the month, potentially days before Warren goes to trial in a separate felony case — he’s facing 20 years in prison for allegedly providing two undocumented men with food, water and a place to sleep over two nights.