The Unraveling of the Conspiracy Case Against No More Deaths Volunteer Scott
Warren
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
11 August 19
The Unraveling of the Conspiracy Case Against No More Deaths Volunteer Scott
Warren
The federal courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, has always been a place where the
borderlands and the American justice system collide. Described by its
engineers as a gateway to the desert and the mountains beyond, it was
completed in 2000, the year that the Pima County medical examiners office
began tracking an explosion of deaths in that same desert.
Each afternoon, Monday through Thursday, dozens of chained migrants who
survived the journey across the border but found themselves in Border Patrol
custody are marched up from the buildings bowels for mass hearings. They
come in groups of up to 70 at a time. You hear the chains before you see the
people men and women still wearing the clothes they crossed in. Appearing
before a judge in clusters, they confess to entering without inspection,
receive their sentences, and leave. Cases are adjudicated in minutes.
On May 29, as the prosecutorial machine churned on, a courtroom on the
buildings fifth floor filled for a different kind of proceeding. Marshals
with radio-linked earpieces lined the back wall. District Judge Raner
Collins took his seat. Before him, a crowd of people sat shoulder to
shoulder on wooden benches. After 16 emotional months, the moment had
finally come.
A young prosecutor in a baggy suit approached the microphone. The American
flag pin fixed to his lapel glinted in the light.
This case is not about humanitarian aid, Nathaniel J. Walters declared in
his first words to the jury. Instead, he said, it was about Scott Warrens
decision to take part in a conspiracy to break the law and shield two
illegal aliens from law enforcement over the course of several days. Warren
was a high-ranking leader of an organization called No More Deaths,
Walters told the jurors, but No More Deaths is not on trial. Scott Warren
is.
For nearly a year and a half, Walters and his co-counsel, Anna Wright, had
been working to put Warren in prison. The then-35-year-old geographer was
arrested on January 17, 2018, along with two young migrants in the
unincorporated community of Ajo, where Warren lives and works. He was
accused of providing 23-year-old Kristian Perez-Villanueva, of El Salvador,
and 20-year-old José Sacaria-Goday, of Honduras, with food, water, and a
place to sleep over three days.
By the time the felony trial began, the prosecutors had already brought
federal misdemeanor charges against Warren and eight other volunteers with
No More Deaths, a faith-based organization headquartered in Tucson, for
leaving jugs of water and other aid supplies on federal lands where migrants
are known to die. The prosecutors had won four convictions in those cases,
but the punishments were relatively light $250 fines plus probation. The
felony case presented an opportunity to mete out real consequences: 20 years
in prison if Warren was convicted and sentenced to consecutive terms.
Signs began popping up in front yards and windows across Tucson in the
months leading up to the trial. Humanitarian Aid Is Never a Crime, they
read, Drop the Charges. Immigrant rights advocates were watching closely. If
the prosecution succeeded, they worried, it could set a disastrous
precedent. Not only would a conviction threaten aid work in a region where
thousands of migrants have died, but it could also conceivably open the door
to a broader criminalization of anyone knowingly providing undocumented
people with the basics of human life, including individuals living in
families with mixed immigration status.
Standing before the jury, Walters promised to tell the story of Warrens
central role in a criminal conspiracy and to show, beyond the shadow of
doubt, that Warren chose to violate the law. As the prosecutor took his
seat, defense attorney Greg Kuykendall rose. He crossed the courtroom and
set a slide on the court projector.
INTENT, the slide said, in large, red letters.
Theres one question in this case, the defense attorney told the jurors.
Did these government prosecutors prove with evidence beyond a reasonable
doubt that Scott Warren intended to violate the law? Kuykendall contended
that he did not. Scott intended one thing: to provide basic human kindness
in the form of humanitarian aid.
Keep your eyes on the ball, he advised.
In the trial of U.S. v. Scott Daniel Warren, 12 jurors were presented with a
set of events and told to come to a unanimous conclusion about its meaning.
They would fail, but in doing so they became a mirror, reflecting a country
deeply divided on the moral and legal questions raised by its border
enforcement strategies. As much as the prosecution and defense worked to
keep the jurors eyes on the ball, there was simply no denying that
virtually every element of the trial, right down to the way it ended, felt
like a referendum not just on the current political moment, but on a
multi-decade government policy of pushing migrants to the borders deadliest
spaces.
The governments argument was not that Scott Warren had somehow strayed
inadvertently into criminal activity in an effort to do the right thing. Far
from it. Rather than some innocent do-gooder, the prosecutors argued, Warren
was an experienced and wily senior official in an organized, nonprofit human
smuggling operation that uses humanitarian aid as a cover, and he led an
illegal operation in January 2018 in service of a broader political agenda
aimed at abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border
Patrol and ushering in a borderless society.
The critical events in the case boiled down to a nine-day period early last
year.
On January 14, Warren arrived at the Barn, a building long used by
humanitarian groups in Ajo, to find Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday
already inside the bathroom. According to their videotaped depositions,
later played for the jury, the pair spent approximately two days crossing
the desert. Both said that trauma accompanied their journeys. Sacaria-Goday
referred to the suffering of his northbound train trek, while
Perez-Villanueva described fleeing problems in El Salvador. The young men
said they had been chased by immigration agents and dropped most of their
supplies, including their food. They made it to Ajo on foot, where they got
two rides from two different drivers at two separate gas stations. The
second driver dropped them off at the Barn. Both drivers were strangers, the
migrants said.
The two young men asked Warren for food and water. He obliged and performed
medical assessments on both of them. A certified wilderness first responder,
Warren recorded their conditions in medical forms known as SOAP notes,
noting the nickel- and quarter-sized blisters on their feet.
Perez-Villanueva also had scratches rayones on his right hand and
reported cold symptoms. Sacaria-Goday complained of serious pain in his
torso, the result of falling on a rock days earlier. In keeping with No More
Deaths protocol, Warren called for advice from two women who have long
provided medical services for humanitarian groups in southern Arizona:
Susannah Brown, a local nurse in Ajo, and Dr. Norma Price, an award-winning
physician.
The migrants spent three days and two nights at the Barn, while Warren and
other humanitarian aid volunteers came and went. All three men were arrested
on the afternoon of January 17, as the migrants were preparing to carry on
north.
The jurors in Warrens case were told to count one fact as stipulated: that
the Pima County medical examiners office had recorded approximately 3,000
suspected migrant deaths in southern Arizona since 2000. During
deliberations, they were later directed to keep in mind that there is no
legal obligation upon citizens to report suspected undocumented immigrants
or any other suspected criminals to law enforcement. For at least one of
the jurors, the premise of the prosecution was a problem. Following the
opening arguments, the young woman passed a note to the judge, informing him
that she could not participate in an attempt to convict Warren for the
events that had been described.
The next morning, she was gone.
With the exception of the two migrants, the governments witnesses were all
Border Patrol agents. Two of them, John Marquez and Brendan Burns, were
members of the plainclothes Disrupt Unit that took Warren into custody.
Both testified in pretrial hearings in the case, describing Disrupt as a
specialized unit focused on bringing in smuggling cases linked to organized
criminal networks. Marquez had taken a particular interest in Warren in the
days leading up to his arrest, text messages showed, and the operation
itself was initiated hours after No More Deaths released a report
accompanied with a viral video documenting the destruction of thousands of
gallons of water in the desert and implicating the Border Patrol in the
vandalism.
The prosecution leaned hard on selfies and security camera footage of the
migrants at two Ajo gas stations as evidence that they were not in need of
aid. At Wrights direction, Burns narrated their actions inside one of the
stores, describing the migrants stretching, charging their phones, sharing a
Powerade, and laughing with a cashier. The prosecutor then displayed a still
image. Shot from overhead, it showed two smiling young men in white
undershirts inside a building: Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday in the
Barn. Behind them, a trio of No More Deaths volunteers waved and flashed
peace signs for the camera.
Looking at Mr. Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday, from what you can see,
do either of them have any bruises, cuts, marks on them? Wright asked.
No, maam, the Border Patrol agent replied.
Another image showed Perez-Villanueva alone, taking a selfie. A third showed
the Central Americans smiling as they cooked a meal in the Barns kitchen.
In each instance, the prosecutor asked if Burns saw signs of injury. He did
not.
By the time the jurors heard from Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday
themselves, in the form of roughly three hours of videotaped deposition
testimony, their street clothes and smiles were gone, replaced by detention
center jumpsuits.
They described how, by the time they reached the outskirts of Ajo, they were
hungry, thirsty, and their feet hurt. Sacaria-Goday said he lied to Border
Patrol agents at various points during his initial arrest interview because
he was angry. Perez-Villanueva testified that the person who drove them to
the Barn told them to keep quiet about his role and that they honored his
request when Warren showed up. Both said Warren was hardly present during
their stay, that they barely spoke with him, and that he never gave them
directions north. They said they were free to come and go as they pleased.
The government then laid out its theory of a criminal conspiracy.
In his opening statement, Walters confirmed that a man named Irineo Mujica
was Warrens alleged co-conspirator. Mujica operates a migrant shelter in
the Mexican border town of Sonoyta, just south of Ajo. He is better known,
however, for his role leading Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an immigration rights
group that organized and supported some of the migrant caravans that led
President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency and deploy thousands
of troops to the border last year. In February, The Intercept revealed that
Mujica and Pueblo Sin Fronteras were targets in a sprawling
intelligence-gathering operation that swept up a number of activists,
journalists, and immigration attorneys working with caravan members in the
San Diego, Tijuana, area in late 2018 and early 2019.
These data points together raised a host of questions about what might be
revealed in Warrens trial. On its final day of arguments, the prosecution
called Border Patrol agent Rogelio Velasco to the stand. A member of the
Tucson sectors intelligence unit, Velasco examined two key phones in the
case: Perez-Villanuevas and Warrens.
According to the Border Patrol agent, those records showed that
Perez-Villanueva texted Mujica the words were here after making it to
Ajo, and that Mujica replied, Im on my way. The records also showed that
Warren had communicated with Mujica in June 2017, December 24, 2017, and on
January 11, 2018, six days before his arrest. His phone records further
revealed communications with Susannah Brown and Norma Price, the nurse and
the doctor, respectively, whom he had called after the migrants arrived at
the Barn.
On cross-examination, Kuykendall asked Velasco about his process for
narrowing down 14,000 pages of records extracted from Warrens phone into a
one-page report.
Just by talking to the U.S. attorneys, the Border Patrol agent testified,
explaining that Walters and Wright gave him the criteria and date ranges to
search for none of which revealed communications between Warren and
Perez-Villanueva, he acknowledged.
Kuykendall asked Velasco if he was aware that Mujica and Warren were
involved in humanitarian aid efforts, and that Mujica operates a shelter in
Mexico.
I think I mightve heard something, but Im not exactly sure, Velasco
replied.
Kuykendall turned to the January 11 communications between Mujica and
Warren, asking the Border Patrol agent if he had seen what Warren Googled
after they got off the phone.
As it turned out, Warrens phone showed that he had looked up backcountry
regulations for federal lands south of Ajo and a recent documentary showing
a humanitarian group finding human remains in that area. Velasco was
unaware. The agent similarly didnt know that, after the migrants arrived in
Ajo, Warren Googled a Spanish word for scratches rayones before
calling Price for medical advice. Nor did Velasco seem familiar with the
fact that Perez-Villanueva had worked for Mujica while staying at his
shelter, offering a possible explanation for their communications and
relationship.
Kuykendall then introduced a June 2017 email between Warren and Mujica and
asked if Velasco had come across it in the searches the prosecutors directed
him to make. He had not. Kuykendall introduced another email, asked the same
question, and received the same answer. The process repeated itself until
roughly a dozen emails were introduced. About halfway through, Velasco
turned his gaze to the prosecutors, a puzzled expression on his face.
The emails were later shown to be part of an ongoing correspondence between
Warren, Mujica, and other humanitarian volunteers, which included Warren
providing tips on how to obtain useable information regarding where missing
or dead migrants could be found.
As Velasco stepped down, the prosecution recalled agent Burns. Burns was
shown selfies Perez-Villanueva took inside a van. Based on the markings on
its windows, Burns testified that the vehicle belonged to Mujica. He knew
this, in part, because a week after Warren and the migrants were arrested,
Mujica was stopped driving the van through a Border Patrol checkpoint
outside Ajo. Inside the vehicle, Burns testified, agents found black water
jugs often carried by migrants crossing the desert and multiple foreign ID
cards belonging to individuals who had been deported.
Burns described racing to the scene as the stop was happening and finding
Mujica still there when he arrived. But when Kuykendall asked the obvious
question whether Burns interrogated Mujica about the conspiracy he
allegedly facilitated with Warren, a man he had arrested the previous week
the Border Patrol agent testified that he did not.
Instead, Burns said, Warrens alleged co-conspirator was released.
The second phase of the prosecutions theory of conspiracy was unveiled on
day four, when the defense called Brown to the stand. Scott told me that
there were two young men in need of medical care at the Barn, Brown
testified, referring to a phone conversation she had with Warren soon after
the migrants arrival. The 67-year-old nurse, currently licensed in Arizona,
headed to the Barn the next morning. Brown described inspecting the two
young men and confirming the injuries Warren had noted. She had estimated
that they might need anywhere from three to five days to recover.
Brown told the jury that it was not uncommon for her and Warren to take
volunteers to Mujicas shelter, though she didnt specifically recall a trip
they had made the weekend ahead of Warrens arrest. Typically, Brown said,
she would drive a pickup truck hauling an enormous tank of potable water.
Volunteers would pass out harm reduction kits, packets that include
chlorine for purifying water, ointment for treating blisters, combs for
removing cactus spines, and a list of American emergency phone numbers,
including 911. Brown would then spend the rest of her day treating migrants
by the dozens.
When Walters had his shot at the nurse, on cross-examination, he zeroed in
on these visits to Mexico and what they might really be about. He asked
Brown if she had ever met the migrants Warren was arrested with before they
made it to Ajo. Brown testified that she wasnt sure.
I see a lot of people at the clinics in Sonoyta, she said.
The prosecutor then introduced three pieces of evidence from December 25,
2017, the same date that the Ajo Samaritans one of the humanitarian groups
both Brown and Warren work with went to the Sonoyta shelter to serve
Christmas dinner.
Walters first flashed an unflattering close-up of Browns face at the scene.
Oh, thats a terrible picture, Brown responded. He then showed a photo of
Mujica at the same location. Then, finally, the assistant U.S. attorney
delivered his coup de grâce: cellphone video taken by Perez-Villanueva.
The shot showed a group of retirement-aged volunteers preparing a picnic
table. Brown was one of them.
Perez-Villanueva asked her name in Spanish.
Susannah, Brown replied. ¿Y usted?
Normally, video of a 67-year-old white woman with U.S. citizenship preparing
Christmas dinner for migrants at a shelter would not be the kind of evidence
one would expect to see in a high-profile federal trial.
Warrens trial was not normal.
As a matter of law enforcement prioritization, harboring cases are
historically rare (though thats changed a bit under the Trump
administration) and are typically focused on for-profit, criminal networks.
An analysis by the Arizona Daily Star uncovered just two cases out of 119
filed in the U.S. District Court in Tucson in the first six months of 2018
where the defendant was not suspected of attempting to turn a profit.
Warrens case was one of them.
Over and over, as the defense called its witnesses to the stand, prosecutors
Walters and Wright implored the jury to understand that these individuals
were not who they said they were they were smugglers too.
After Warren was arrested, the Border Patrol either forgot or failed to
secure the Barn as a crime scene. In the days that followed, volunteer
Flannery Shay-Nimrow took the SOAP notes and locations of water drops from
the Barn. Walters challenged the decision: What kind of transparent
organization removes its materials from an aid station? Shay-Nimrow reminded
the prosecutor that No More Deaths has documented the Border Patrol
destroying its water drops.
When longtime volunteer Geena Jackson told the jury that No More Deaths
models its protocols after the international Red Cross, which requires that
humanitarian aid be separate and distinguished from law enforcement to be
effective, Walters pounced again.
Isnt it true that No More Deaths has openly advocated for the abolishment
of ICE? he asked.
Walters had taken the same line of attack in previous No More Deaths
hearings and would turn to it more than once during Warrens felony trial.
Jackson told the prosecutor that she was unsure if that was true.
Are you aware that No More Deaths has also called for the abolishment for
the entire Border Patrol? Walters asked, pressing on. Given No More Deaths
mission to end death and suffering in the desert, Jackson acknowledged, the
end of the agency that causes the death and suffering would make sense,
yes.
For a prosecution that was ostensibly not about humanitarian aid or No More
Deaths, the two subjects were coming up quite a bit. That remained so when,
late in the afternoon on day five, Warren stepped onto the witness stand for
the first time.
As people who know him often point out, Warren was perhaps the most
challenging person the prosecution could have chosen to make an example of.
Not only did he have the unearned advantage of being a well-educated white
man in a prosecutorial system that comes down harder on people who are not,
he also happened to be a profoundly effective speaker and a literal expert
on the issues core to his case.
Testifying over two days, Warren told the jurors how he came to Ajo looking
for a quiet place to write my dissertation and soon found himself immersed
in a generations-old community effort to confront migrant deaths in the
borderlands. His field is geography, he explained, and his focus is on the
human and cultural geography of the U.S.-Mexico border. Warren likened Ajo
to a lone population center in a a low-intensity conflict zone. Its not
as though there are out-and-out gun battles, he explained The border is
not this scary, deadly place that you hear about in the media. What there
is, however, is an enormous build-up of security and surveillance
infrastructure; armed state and nonstate actors; and civilians, some of whom
happen to be migrating through one of the deadliest landscapes in the
Western hemisphere, while an army of federal agents searches for them night
and day.
Knowing what he did as an academic the push and pull and factors that
cause people to migrate, and the manner and scale at which they die in the
Sonoran Desert left him with little alternative but to act, Warren
testified. In one sense, it feels a little choice-less, he said. How
could you not do that? Geographers research and write about places, Warren
acknowledged, but to him, making the place where you live more humane, more
just is also part of the job.
Crossing the desert is an epic undertaking where you have to put everything
youve got on the line in order to make it, Warren explained; one where it
is impossible to carry enough water and there is the expectation that you
are going to witness death. Warren told the jury about the 19 times he has
recovered human remains in the desert, how he fixates on the loneliness that
accompanies such deaths, and the mark those encounters have left on him.
When he meets people preparing to, or already crossing, the desert, Warren
said, a vision flashes through his mind. I see these bones, he said.
Almost like a split screen.
The person in the flesh, and the ones who didnt make it.
Its not a stretch to say that every day, migrants are kind of coming
stumbling out of the wilderness, knocking on doors in Ajo, needing food and
water and other kinds of basic care, Warren testified.
People have been giving aid for generations in that town, he explained.
The great thing about it, he added as his first day of testimony wrapped
up, is humanitarian aid work is legal.
Court resumed the next morning under a darkened cloud of conspiracy.
Approximately two hours before Warren took the witness stand the previous
afternoon, Mujica was arrested in Sonoyta along with another activist. The
charges, which soon became public, were related to illegally moving human
beings across borders.
Though Mujica, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story,
was released from custody days later, the news of his arrest reverberated in
whispers through the Tucson courthouse. While day one of Warrens testimony
focused on his beliefs, day two would address the facts of his case. If the
government planned to spring some surprise evidence linking Warren to the
newly arrested Mujica during cross-examination, as they did with nurse
Brown, this would be the day to do it.
Returning to the witness stand, with Kuykendall asking the questions, Warren
told the jury how the first weeks of 2018 were a busy time. In addition to
teaching classes at Arizona State University, he was also beginning a new
gig at a community college for residents of the Tohono Oodham Nation
Reservation, up the road from Ajo. On top of that, he was working as a
facilitator at No More Deaths for a new monthlong volunteer program based
out of the Barn.
Describing his January 11 communications with Mujica, Warren told the jury
that Mujica had called with information about some human remains that
migrants coming through his shelter had reported spotting. The tip, Warren
testified, jogged his memory. He got off the phone and looked up a recently
published Vice News documentary that depicted a humanitarian group, the
Armadillos Búsqueda y Rescate, on an operation outside Ajo in which it
reported the discovery of human remains.
For whatever reason, the recovery was never done, Warren said. He wondered
if the remains the Armadillos found might be the ones Mujica was hearing
about at the shelter.
Warren went on to explain that he and Mujica had many email conversations
about search-and-recovery work in the desert and the coordination of
volunteer visits to the shelter.
The Friday before he was taken into custody, Warren told the jury, he and
Brown took the new volunteers to the shelter. One of those volunteers,
Isabella Reis-Newsom, who served as Browns translator for the day,
testified that the goals of the visit were to supply clean water, perform
medical assessments, and provide information on the risks associated with
crossing the desert. She estimated that Brown treated between 50 and 70
patients over multiple hours.
The new volunteers headed out into the field the following day, locating the
human remains the Armadillos had reported. The next morning, Warren went to
the local sheriffs office substation to coordinate a recovery operation,
which was completed later that afternoon. It was around sunset, Warren said,
when he pulled into the Barn with a bag of groceries to make dinner for the
returning volunteers. As he approached the building, he noticed that the
bathroom door was open. Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday were standing in
the doorway.
Perez-Villanueva did most of the talking, Warren said, explaining that they
were looking for water and asking if they could help him with his groceries.
This kind of thing happens a lot in Ajo, Warren told the jury.
Placing the perishables in the fridge, Warren began his medical assessments.
He made his calls to Brown and Price, the doctor. Among the new volunteers
was a fluent Spanish-speaking EMT, he added, who took over much of the
medical supervision responsibilities when the group returned to the Barn.
Kuykendall asked if Warren ever instructed the migrants to hide. Warren
replied that he had not. We cant break the law, he explained. We want to
be spending our time in the desert getting water out, getting food and water
and medical care to people not here.
My intention was to provide them some basic humanitarian aid, he
testified, and to treat them as I would any human being who showed up on my
doorstep.
The following days saw Warren making a handful of appearances at the Barn.
He spent the day of his arrest working for home, prepping classwork and
ironing out logistics for the arrival of a group of high school students
that night. It was around 4 p.m. when he got to the Barn, he said. There
were three No More Deaths facilitators inside. Perez-Villanueva and
Sacaria-Goday were still there, though they were on their way out. Warren
took the two outside.
I pointed out two landmarks to them, Warren testified Childs Mountain
and Hat Mountain. I told them that the critical piece of information that
they need to know is that Highway 85 runs between those two mountains.
This was not about giving the pair directions to find a ride or evade the
Border Patrol, Warren explained. Theres only one paved highway in all of
this desert area, he told the jury its the only piece of civilization
out there. If Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday somehow got to the left of
Childs Mountain, they could stray into the Growler Valley, a profoundly
remote stretch of desert where the remains of hundreds of migrants have been
found.
If you need help, Warren told the young men, you walk this way you dont
walk that way.
As the prosecution came in for cross-examination, it felt as though Walters
and Warren werent just on opposing sides but in alternate realities.
In terms of No More Deaths, you would agree that youre a high-ranking
leader in that organization? the prosecutor told Warren.
Warren explained that No More Deaths is more of a flat-power organization,
and that experienced volunteer would be a fair description.
Carrying on, Walters shifted attention to the day of his arrest. Despite
his entire testimony centering around the migrants well being, the
prosecutor submitted for the jury that Warrens actions in those moments
revealed his true motives.
You know the jig is up, Walters said.
The jig? Warren asked.
You didnt hand over the SOAP notes, Walters explained. These were hardly
the actions of an innocent man.
Well, Warren replied. I was in handcuffs.
Undeterred, Walters pressed on, positioning himself to score a spectacular
prosecutorial goal.
On the eve of his trial, Warren published an opinion piece in the Washington
Post laying out the facts of his case and describing the potential
precedents his conviction could set. Walters pointed to a line Warren wrote
that someone had told the migrants they might be able to find help at the
Barn.
You knew that it was Irineo Mujica, Walters said.
No, Warren testified, he didnt know who dropped the migrants off.
The prosecutor then noted that Warren had described the deaths of migrants
in the borderlands as violent. He asked Warren to tell the jury what he
meant by violent. The border studies instructor, with a Ph.D. in the human
and social geography of the region, appeared more than willing to offer his
thoughts on the issue.
When I think of violence, its more like systemic and institutional
violence, Warren explained violence within much larger policies that are
at play.
The mess the prosecutor made for himself became even more clear on rebuttal,
when Kuykendall started reading Warrens op-ed from the beginning. Walters
objected but Collins overruled, directing the defendant himself to read the
text.
Reading his article slowly and carefully, Warren described the dire
humanitarian situation around Ajo and how, for years, humanitarian groups
and local residents navigated a coexistence with the Border Patrol. After
all, he noted, in a town as small as Ajo, were all neighbors, and
everybodys kids go to the same school. Warren referenced the other cases
Walters and Wright had brought against No More Deaths volunteers for leaving
water in the desert and outlined the dangerous precedent his case could
set for mixed-status families.
The Trump administrations policies warehousing asylees, separating
families, caging children seek to impose hardship and cruelty, he read.
For this strategy to work, it must also stamp out kindness.
Collins had made a daily point of telling the jurors not to research
Warrens case, not to discuss it with anyone, to pay no mind to the fact
that this particular trial, for some reason, drew a packed audience and a
crowd of demonstrators every single day. Much of what the judge would hope
to exclude from the jurors minds was now trial testimony. The presidents
name was invoked, and the case was tied directly to his most controversial
immigration initiatives.
As Warren read from his piece, Walters stared straight ahead, posture rigid
as he took large gulps from a Styrofoam cup.
The next morning, the line to get into the courthouse was out the door.
Wright delivered the governments closing arguments.
On Christmas Eve, 2017, she said, Warren texted Mujica. The following day,
Brown was at Mujicas shelter serving food. Both Mujica and Perez-Villanueva
were there. Weeks later, on January 11, Warren and Mujica spoke by phone.
The next day, Warren and Brown visited the shelter, where they delivered No
More Deaths harm reduction kits or, as Wright referred to them,
predeparture kits. Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday crossed the border
the following night. Two days later, they made it to Ajo, where
Perez-Villanueva called Mujica and got a ride to the Barn. Warren arrived
shortly thereafter.
That is evidence not of coincidence, Wright told the jury. But of
planning.
Everything Warren did in the days that followed was in furtherance of this
well-made-off criminal plan, Wright said, and nothing his attorneys said
could be taken seriously. Warren made two calls after the migrants arrived,
she pointed out, but the first, to the nurse, was not included in his SOAP
notes. That call doesnt show up in the SOAP notes because its not about
medical care, Wright asserted. That call is letting her know that he made
it and the plan worked. The notes were part of the cover-up, Wright said,
and the migrants were never in need of medical care. Mujica and the
defendant have an ongoing relationship, she explained. That relationship
involved activities around illegal aliens. Sometimes theyre search and
rescue. Sometimes theyre this. Warren was the hub in a criminal
operation, she insisted, in which, he, Mujica, Brown, and unspecified
others conspired to further Kristian and Josés illegal journey into the
United States.
The question is, whats the benefit to him of all this? Wright asked the
jury. Hes not getting any money out of it. That much is clear. So what
does he get?
The answer, the prosecutor argued, was that he gets to further the goals of
the organization, of which he is a high-ranking leader. One of the goals
of that organization, Wright told the jury, although never stated outright,
is to thwart Border Patrol at every possible turn.
As Kuykendall replaced Wright at the microphone, the word INTENT, in
large, red letters, returned to the jurors screens.
Like I said at the beginning of this case, theres one issue, he said.
Walking through the legal systems different standards of proof, the defense
attorney stressed the high bar of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In Warrens case, the government had at its disposal some 500 Border Patrol
agents in Ajo and 14,000-plus pages of Warrens phone records. Everything
about Scotts life, Kuykendall said. Not only did the prosecutors fail to
produce evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, he argued, but there was in fact
an intentional absence of evidence. Kuykendall pointed to the testimony of
the agent who examined Warrens cellphone, who was oblivious to a history of
communications between Warren and Mujica.
Theyre alleging Scott talked to Irineo about some far-flung conspiracy,
some conspiracy that doesnt make a bit of sense, but they intentionally
told the agent, Dont look at the emails, Kuykendall said. If youre the
government of the United States, with all the power in the world, you direct
your agents to review precisely this kind of evidence and present it to
folks like you.
And then there was the testimony of agent Burns, Kuykendall went on to say,
who had Mujica in front of him at a Border Patrol checkpoint a week after
Warrens arrest and did not ask him about the alleged conspiracy. If the
government wanted to produce evidence to you of a conspiracy between Scott
Warren and Irineo Mujica, what better evidence than finding out from Mujica
what they were talking about? Kuykendall asked. Why didnt they do that?
That right there constitutes a gigantic, gaping, reasonable doubt.
If it werent so scary, it would be laughable, he added. But it isnt
laughable. Its the most important day of Scotts life.
The defense attorney wrapped up by returning to the two stipulated facts in
the trial. Its not against the law in our country to provide humanitarian
aid unless, in doing so, you intend to violate the law, he said. Theres
absolutely no evidence that Scott intended to violate the law. The evidence
in this case is precisely the contrary.
Scott wanted to alleviate human suffering, Kuykendall told the jurors.
This isnt a close call.
Wrights rebuttal lasted more than half an hour. Were not saying the
defendant is evil, she said. No, he did a bad thing and thats whats
charged in the indictment. The jurors had to know, Wright argued, her
intensity building as she made her final pleas, that this is not a case
about deaths in the desert and a crisis and all this.
That is a smokescreen to distract you from what happened, she said.
Warren and his lawyers were deploying slippery language and fancy words, the
prosecutor argued. The idea that orientation is a human right and thats
what Warren provided the migrants as he pointed out landmarks in the moments
before their arrests was just another smokescreen, she said.
Orientation is a fancy word for giving people directions, Wight argued.
It is an attempt to make legitimate what is actually illegal. Similarly,
she said, the word context, which Warren used in attempt to explain his
role in No More Deaths, was just another fancy word for confusion.
The fact that Perez-Villanuevas text messages showed that he planned to get
to Phoenix the first night he made it to the U.S. undercutting the idea of
a plan to stay in Ajo didnt matter, Wright argued. Travel plans change,
she said. That doesnt mean that theres not a plan, not a conspiracy. It
simply means that Kristian doesnt know all the details. And that would make
sense. Whos the experts? Whos been doing this awhile? Whos been around
people whove been crossing and have that information? Not Kristian. Its
the other people planning.
As she brought her case to close, Wright returned to the selfies,
encouraging the jurors to trust what they saw. Looking with your own eyes,
you can make your own assessment, she said. They are not injured. They
were not sick. They were not resting and recuperating on their sick beds.
They were taking their time getting to the place that they wanted to get to,
with all the help they could possibly need from the defendant. They got
food. They got water. They got shelter. They got directions. They had
everything brought to the Barn that they could possibly need. Everything.
For four days.
Coincidences dont happen like this, the prosecutor said. This was a plan
and under the law, a plan like this is a conspiracy.
As the jurors headed into deliberations, I headed to Warrens attorneys
office.
Kuykendall and his co-counsel, Amy Knight, are death penalty defense
attorneys by trade. They took on Warrens case pro bono, as a matter of
principle. During their 16 months working on it, they had maintained a low
media profile. Though Warrens prosecution had precedent-setting potential,
the charges he faced were low-level felonies compared to the capital crimes
Kuykendall and Knight usually litigate. The attorneys kept up their death
penalty defense posture nonetheless, hammering the prosecution with pretrial
motions in an effort to force the government to truly prove its case or
back down.
The Border Patrols not accustomed to trying cases, Kuykendall said, as
the lawyers settled in for lunch, waiting for the jury to return its
verdict. In a system in which an agents investigative responsibility often
boils down to proving a person lacks papers, and a right to attorney is not
a given, nobody goes to trial, Kuykendall said. Nobody fights back.
While Kuykendall made most of the arguments in court, Knight was in many
ways the tactician behind Warrens defense. She had accepted early on that
she wasnt going to find an expert witness on migrant deaths in the Arizona
desert who would not be perceived as being on Warrens side. Theres no
such person, she said. The U.S. government has maintained a multi-decade
policy of channeling migrants into the deadliest areas of the desert,
resulting in thousands of deaths, in order to deter others from coming.
Once you know this information, you cant not be an advocate.
Their policy doesnt work if its not deadly, she added.
As Warrens trial played out, Knight said, she was struck by the shocking
amount of power the federal government really has. Here were two assistant
U.S. attorneys interpreting a law in a new, and radically more aggressive,
direction and getting institutional support from the Department of Justice
to do so. Kuykendall agreed. The defense attorney said it wouldnt surprise
him if Warrens prosecution cost the government upwards of $1 million. How
you could not believe that Scotts primary intention in life is to alleviate
suffering, I dont understand, he said, adding that it was an
interpretation of the facts that made him aware of what a polarized
universe we live in.
Its like they came from Mars or something, and they have a completely
different set of receptors, Kuykendall said.
The day ended without a verdict. The weekend came and went. The following
Monday morning, I found Susannah Brown mingling with No More Deaths
volunteers outside the courthouse. Just a few days earlier, she had walked
into the building and been blindsided by a federal prosecutor naming her as
an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony conspiracy. She was clearly still
processing. I felt pretty good until Friday, Brown told me with a laugh.
And then it was like, holy shit. I couldnt believe what I was hearing.
It was like, this is preposterous, youre crazy, she said. The chilling
part, she added, was that Wright was skillful at crafting a narrative that
could sound compelling, if you didnt know what the facts were.
That was scary, Brown said.
Brown was one of several Ajo residents I had come to know over the last year
who saw Warrens prosecution as a defining moment in their towns recent
history and a test of their own principles. At a community meeting earlier
this year, I heard residents like her describe a proud history of providing
aid to migrants in Ajo, and the fear and confusion they were feeling now. It
was clear that Warrens experience and actions were not unusual. The federal
governments posture was at odds with traditions that many people viewed as
moral obligations. Some, like Brown, had built their lives around the
fulfillment of those obligations and werent planning to change course now.
Were gonna carry on, she told me. We have to.
Late on the afternoon of June 10, a phone rang in Warrens attorneys
office: The court clerk was calling to say that the jury had delivered a
note to Judge Raner Collins. The lawyers piled into a car and headed for the
courthouse.
After 11 hours and 23 minutes of deliberations, Collins told the court, the
jurors were unable to reach consensus. He ordered them to go back and try
again. Each of you must decide the case for yourself, he said. Im going
to ask you to retire again and continue deliberations.
The following day, at 12:36 p.m., the phone rang again. Warrens lawyers
hustled back to court. An hour later, the jurors filed in. They were
deadlocked. Collins asked if they all agreed that further deliberation would
not result in a resolution. On that point, there was unanimity. It would
not.
I want to thank you for your time and your attention, Collins told the
jurors, and with that, they were dismissed. Collins filed a formal mistrial
later that afternoon.
After their dismissal, the jurors invited Kuykendall and Wright in for a
conversation. Eight of them believed that Warren was innocent on all counts,
the lawyers learned, and four believed that he was guilty as charged. This
did not appear to be a case of jury nullification, when jurors take a
position against a certain type of prosecution or charge and refuse to
convict regardless of the evidence. On the contrary, Kuykendall told me, it
was a jury that started from a position of guilt and evolved as more
evidence was presented.
They were all very suspicious, he said, and their deliberations appeared
sincere.
Warren walked out of the courthouse to a crowd of friends and the press.
Standing under the shade of a tree in a light gray suit, he thanked the
people who had supported him and called attention to the fact that
Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday had regrettably not received the same
support. Since my arrest in January 2018, at least 88 bodies were recovered
from the Ajo corridor of the Arizona desert, Warren told the crowd. We
know thats a minimum number and that many more are out there and have not
been found.
The governments plan, in the midst of this humanitarian crisis? he asked.
Policies to target undocumented people, refugees, and their families;
prosecutions to criminalize humanitarian aid, kindness, and solidarity.
Border Patrol agents recovered the body of 6-year-old Gurupreet Kaur the
following day. She was found south of Ajo, on the Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument, where Warren and other area humanitarian groups have directed much
of their work. Her cause of death was heat stroke. According to U.S. Customs
and Border Protection, temperatures had reached a high of 108 degrees in the
area where she was found. The second grader passed away while her mother,
who came to the U.S. from India to seek asylum, was searching for water.
That afternoon, U.S. Attorneys office issued a statement saying that it
would make a determination as to whether to retry Warrens case ahead of a
July 2 hearing.
The knot of compounding disasters, tragedies, and outrages on the border
seemed to somehow worsen in the days that followed, with fresh evidence of
children held in horrifying conditions at immigration detention centers, the
drowning of a father and daughter who attempted to cross the Rio Grande, and
revelations of a secret Border Patrol Facebook group that was a cesspool of
rage and hate and boasted nearly 10,000 members, including the Border Patrol
chief herself.
Nobody knew what to expect when Warren returned to court in early July.
Would the U.S. Attorneys office take the 8-to-4 split as a sign that their
case was flawed and pack it up? Or, after all this time and effort, would
they stay the course?
At 9:37 a.m. on July 2, Collinss courtroom filled. Anna Wright, who just a
few weeks earlier had passionately argued that Warren was the ringleader in
a network of nonprofit human smugglers, informed the judge that the
government was dropping its conspiracy charge. The U.S. Attorneys office
would continue to pursue the two harboring charges, Wright said, though
Warren had the option to accept a plea deal, if he so desired.
The government had split the difference, abandoning a core component of its
criminal narrative, while holding on to the possibility of still eking out a
win down the line. Standing outside the court, under the same trees where he
had addressed the media weeks before, Warren said in a statement that he and
his attorneys were ready for the second trial and more prepared than ever.
Though, he added, it remained unclear what the point of all this effort,
time, and money has been and now continues to be.
While I do not know what the government has hoped to accomplish here,
Warren said, I do know what the effect of all this has been and will
continue to be: a raising of public consciousness, a greater awareness of
the humanitarian crisis in the borderlands, more volunteers who want to
stand in solidarity with migrants, local residents stiffened in their
resistance to border walls and the militarization of our communities, and a
flood of water into the desert at a time when it is most needed.
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