Earlier this month, federal prosecutors in Arizona brought criminal charges against a local activist who devotes his free time to helping migrants survive the deadly desert route northward. Scott Daniel Warren, prosecutors allege in a complaint accusing him of violating a federal law against harboring migrants, provided two people with “food, water, beds, and clean clothes” for three days.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been a vocal proponent of deploying the Justice Department’s extensive resources against migrants. In a April 2017, he urged prosecutors to ramp up criminal charges for five federal offenses related to migration. Most of those are familiar to crimmigration.com readers. Illegal entry and illegal reentry, for example, make up the bulk of federal immigration prosecutions in any given year. Stretching to the end of the George W. Bush administration and continuing uninterrupted they also make up the most prosecuted crimes across the federal district courts.
Harboring, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii), is different. Though it was among the five crimes listed by Attorney General Sessions—and comes with a penalty of up to five years imprisonment—it’s a rarely branch of the network of federal immigration crimes. Prosecutors tap it so infrequently that the official statistical compilation of federal court dockets doesn’t even list harboring crimes separately. Instead, it lists four specific types of federal immigration crimes and a fifth category, “other immigration offenses,” into which harboring fits. Even if we assume, implausibly, that every one of the “other immigration offenses” counted refers to harboring, we would still be left with a little-used offense. In 2017, United States Attorneys’ Offices nationwide brought a mere 68 prosecutions for this catch-all category. The year before, they lodged 57. Remarkably, prosecutors haven’t broken double digits since at least 2010. This is noteworthy given that federal immigration prosecutions have dominated criminal dockets in federal courts during that time.
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The few harboring cases that prosecutors have brought in the last seven years merely shows how unusual Warren’s situation is. It hasn’t yet been a year since Sessions pleaded with prosecutors to turn their energies toward the pressing problem of people providing food, water, and shelter to individuals who might otherwise die. I’ll be interested to see whether there is a substantial uptick in the number of harboring prosecutions reported when the fiscal year 2018 numbers come in.
Update (March 13, 2018): On March 9, the federal judge ordered the release of the two migrants who Mr. Warren helped. They had been jailed as “material witnesses” until they gave video depositions. They will now be handed over to DHS for removal. In the words of the memo entered on the court’s docket, “It is Ordered that the material witnesses in this action are to be released to the Department of Homeland Security to be returned to their country of origin.”
Hello, Cesar. I have been reading some of your comments on the notion of prosecuting for obstruction of justice individual public officials (especially elected ones) from sanctuary jurisdictions. You noted — correct me if I misunderstand what you’re saying — that such cases would require a public official’s personal involvement in a case, and not merely supporting or championing a jurisdiction’s sanctuary policy.
Now, I assume you’re familiar with the case of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s recent public announcement that ICE would be imminently conducting raids in the Bay Area. This has definitely aroused the ire of top appointees in Homeland Security and Justice, who claim her tipoff endangered the lives of federal agents, made the lawful performance of their jobs harder and subjected law-abiding Americans to more exposure to crime by “illegal aliens” who would’ve otherwise been rounded up.
Schaaf, of course, has staunchly defended the warning and said her counsel advised her she was breaking no law. She asserted no affirmative defense, however.
I haven’t read any reporting on this in the press, though there may have been some. My questions, as a freelance Bay Area journalist myself:
1) In your expert opinion, could Shaaf be in legal jeopardy, as she has taken affirmative steps to thwart the raids?
2) Are you aware of any prosecutions of public officials under her or substantially similar circumstances?
Thanks for your time.
A case of Religious Persecution, and 1st Amendment Civil rights violation!
Matthew 25:31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
This man had no choice but to Obey the Word of God or be forever doomed!