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Retrial For Activist In Arizona

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

In Arizona, the U.S. government is again prosecuting a humanitarian aid worker it says was harboring undocumented immigrants and trying to hide them from Border Patrol agents. From member station KJZZ, Michel Marizco reports.

MICHEL MARIZCO, BYLINE: The government's new case against Scott Warren is whether two undocumented Central American men whom he provided food and shelter to actually needed help. The Arizona educator is using the same argument he used when the last prosecution ended in a mistrial last summer, that he had no intention of committing a crime and was under no obligation to turn the two men in. Warren works with No More Deaths, a group that tries to help people illegally crossing the Arizona border to survive. The Reverend John Fife founded the organization.

JOHN FIFE: I am not only proud of this organization but of all of the residents of the borderlands here who have understood that to give food and water and emergency medical care to people who show up at their door is not a crime.

MARIZCO: The trial is expected to last two weeks. For NPR News, I'm Michel Marizco in Tucson. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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