The Trump administration decided to send a message to desperate people trying to seek sanctuary in the US: ‘Come, and we will torture you. We will rip your families apart. We will let your kids perish in our custody. And we will punish any American who tries to keep you alive if you are dying.’

Sadism bordering on sociopathy.

But wait, there’s more. The administration has the support of Christian conservatives. These stalwart warriors will not let the pleas of decency from non-Christians steer them from their path of inhumanity. They are resolved to keep the sacred bounds of God’s country free from the stain of migrant dust.

The Good Samaritan would be forbidden his kindness on these desert paths. 

Just ask Scott Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor from Ajo, AZ. He had the temerity to ignore brutish law by exercising compassion. He and like-minded humanitarians established the group ‘No More Deaths’ or ‘No Mas Muertes’. These outlaws litter the Arizona desert with food and water so that desperate people may make it out.

For his acts of compassion, Warren was arrested in 2017 and charged with three felony counts including conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants. He denies the transporting and harboring. And adds that it is his spiritual mandate to help people in distress and therefore, the government is trampling his religious rights.

Deny a gay couple a nuptial cake, and the religious right has your back. Try to save a suffering person, and these same religious leaders cheer on the secular authorities as they throw you in the brig.

The hypocrisy is rank. State governments pass misogynistic laws denying women the right to their corporeal integrity based on ‘right to life’ morality — but shed this concern for the human soul when it is enfleshed in a brown, Central-American, non-English speaker. 

Imagine the legal dilemma facing the resident of a southern Arizona town approached by a pregnant immigrant. If he gives her water he could be charged with ‘transporting and harboring’, but if he doesn’t and the fetus miscarries he could be accused of promoting abortion — what a pickle. 

Not to worry, I suspect religious shysters have used their law degrees to word the various laws so that the maximum amount of suffering is visited upon the greatest number of people possible. They honor their Old Testament God in their capricious cruelty, as they avert their eyes from Jesus’ admonitions to take care of the poor, the suffering, the meek.

I doubt any of these Sadducees will stumble across this diary, but should one do I remind him of Matthew 25:41-45

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me’.”

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’.”

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

In the west Texas town of Marfa, Teresa Todd, a four-time elected city and county attorney, is in legal jeopardy for saving a life. Here’s the story in her words: (Credit: NPR)

“I see a young man in a white shirt. He runs out toward the road where I am,” Todd recounted. She says the man was pleading for assistance. “I can’t just leave this guy on the side of the road. I have to go see if I can help.”

The young man told Todd that his sister, 18-year-old Esmeralda, was in trouble.

“I mean, she can hardly walk, she’s very dazed,” recalled Todd.

Todd gave the immigrants shelter in her car and texted a friend who was local counsel for the Border Patrol (USBP). Before she got through, a sheriff’s deputy showed up. He called the USPB. They sent an agent, who ended up reading Todd her Miranda rights. Later she was interviewed by a DHS agent and a Texas Ranger. Her phone was confiscated for 53 days.

Todd is unrepentant: “I feel like I did the right thing. I don’t feel I did anything wrong.” She didn’t. Esmeralda later said that her doctors had told her she was close to dying and that this Good Samaritan had saved her life.

Regardless, Theresa Todd is waiting to hear if she will be charged with human smuggling.

And in Arizona, Scott Warren still faces charges that could see him jailed for up to 20 years.

The post Scott Warren Faces 20 Years in Prison for Giving Water to an Immigrant. appeared first on The Critical Mind.