Good Samaritan Migrant Aid Workers Arrested
Here's an example of how tougher punitive immigration bills can be misapplied:
Prosecutors in Arizona have charged two volunteers who say they tried to save the lives of three sick migrants stranded in the desert with felony charges of transporting illegal immigrants. If convicted, Daniel Strauss, of Manhattan, and Shanti Sellz, of Iowa City, Iowa, both 24, could face up to 15 years in federal prison and a half-million-dollar fine.
...in court papers, the Border Patrol contended the work of the faith-based group No More Deaths was encouraging migrants to cross illegally into the United States. The agency also contended group leaders were warned volunteers could be arrested. The leaders dismissed the arguments as absurd.
Daniel Strauss had this to say:
"It seems like common sense that providing humanitarian aid to someone who is in an extreme medical condition can't be against the law," said Strauss, who grew up on the Upper West Side and attended the elite Fieldston School High School in the Bronx. "The act of saving someone's life shouldn't be something that's prosecuted. It's crazy."
As to the incident that caused the arrest:
Strauss, a social worker in Jackson Hole, Wyo., who still volunteers with the group, vividly remembers the day they found the immigrants. It was last year, during the hottest July in local history - that week left a record 78 migrants dead.
One of the parched immigrants they found last July 9 was lying in a ditch and couldn't stop throwing up when rescue workers tried to give him water. He had blood in his diarrhea and had been drinking contaminated water out of slimy cattle troughs.
....Strauss and Sellz got into a Subaru GL Wagon with the word "Samaritan" written in big letters on the side. They started driving the Mexican man and two others in similar condition north to a hospital in Tucson. Before they got there, Border Patrol agents pulled them over and arrested the migrants.
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