The laws regarding entering the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge without a permit as well as leaving garbage were established long before Trump took office. They were updated in July of 2017 a tiny bit. Yet, somehow, this is all Trump’s Fault, and the Washington Post Editorial Board highlights that they are for open borders with their use of the word “migrants”. Also, they weren’t really convicted for what the headline says
Convicted for leaving water for migrants in the desert: This is Trump’s justice
A FEW weeks ago, federal prosecutors in Arizona secured a conviction against four humanitarian aid workers who left water in the desert for migrants who might otherwise die of heat exposure and thirst. Separately, they dropped manslaughter charges against a U.S. Border Patrol agent who fired 16 times across the border, killing a teenage Mexican boy. The aid workers face a fine and up to six months in jail. The Border Patrol officer faces no further legal consequences.
That is a snapshot of twisted frontier justice in the age of Trump. Save a migrant’s life, and you risk becoming a political prisoner. Kill a Mexican teenager, and you walk free.
The law states that you cannot enter without a permit, nor leave any “aid” supplies, the latter for two reasons: it entices illegal aliens to come illegally, and via a really, really dangerous area. That same “aid” is also then discarded, creating trash in the pristine desert area. The Border Patrol agent had already been through two trials, having been acquitted on one charge and deadlocked on a second in the first trial and a deadlocked jury in the second. There was no point in the third. A quick link above is not a substitute for showing the real details or dropping it at the end of the editorial, WPEB.
The four aid workers, all women, were volunteers in service to an organization, No More Deaths, whose religious views inform its mission to prevent undocumented migrants from dying during their perilous northward trek. They drove into the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, about 100 miles southwest of Phoenix, to leave water jugs along with some canned beans.
Suddenly, the WPEB is concerned about religious views. If they really cared, they wouldn’t entice illegals to cross through the refuge, a harsh, deadly area if you don’t start with right supplies. Heck, even if you do. Even the National Wildlife Federation says the area is dangerous, and has tons of smugglers and others coming through.
The women — Natalie Hoffman, Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick — made no effort to conceal their work. Confronted by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officer, they said they believed everyone deserved access to basic survival needs. One of them, Ms. Orozco-McCormick, compared the wildlife refuge to a graveyard, such is the ubiquity of human remains there. (snip)
In the past, prosecutors declined to press charges against the volunteers who try to help by leaving water and canned food in the desert. But the four women, arrested in August 2017, were tried for the misdemeanor offenses of entering a refuge without a permit, abandoning personal property and, in the case of Ms. Hoffman, driving in a restricted area. U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernardo Velasco, who presided over the bench trial, said their actions ran afoul of the “national decision to maintain the Reserve in its pristine nature.â€
And that’s why you don’t incent people to cross illegally there by leaving them aid. And they admitted they broke the law. Others in their group face trials in February and March, one of them for harboring illegal aliens. And they were damaging the refuge. It’s not Trump’s fault they made the decision to violate U.S. law.
