In 2007, the Rothko Chapel presented its Óscar Romero Award to two volunteers from No More Deaths for their efforts to help migrants who were dying in the Arizona desert. The award, named after Saint Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador, recognizes grassroots human rights activists who address injustices around the world. More than a decade later, the group’s volunteers continue their crucial work at the risk of being prosecuted for felonies.

No More Deaths, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, was founded in 2004 to end the deaths of undocumented migrants crossing desert regions near the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2005, Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss were driving three seriously dehydrated migrants to Tucson for medical help when the U.S. Border Patrol stopped and arrested them.

Even though No More Deaths was in regular communication with Border Patrol and operated in a very transparent manner as they served distressed people in need, the volunteers were charged with two federal felonies for “conspiring and transporting illegal aliens.” As a national outcry grew over the unjust nature of their arrest, Sellz and Strauss were offered plea bargain agreements that would have allowed them to avoid incarceration by admitting that they had committed a crime.

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They rejected these offers on the grounds that “humanitarian aid is never a crime.”

On Sept. 1, 2006, U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins dismissed all charges against Sellz and Strauss, ruling that the volunteers had done all they could to make sure that they were not in violation of the law and that “further prosecution would violate the defendants’ due process rights.”

One might have thought that this was the end of the story and that No More Deaths could carry out its mission without fear of further harassment and intrusion by the federal government. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

On Jan. 18, 2018, Border Patrol arrested another volunteer with No More Deaths, Scott Warren, for his efforts to serve undocumented immigrants in dire need of humanitarian assistance. A recent No More Deaths newsletter said that Warren’s arrest is part of an intentional “interference with our aid efforts” and continued that the “targeting of humanitarian aid workers…is only an escalation of the kind of violence and repression that Border Patrol and other state agencies have been unleashing on migrant and undocumented communities for decades.”

This May, much as in the 2005 incident, Warren was charged and stood trial in Tucson Federal Court on felony charges for “harboring and conspiracy…and for providing humanitarian aid (food, water and clothing)” to migrants near the Sonoran Desert.

The jury deadlocked. Earlier this month, according to CNN, charges of conspiracy against Warren were dropped, but federal prosecutors will seek to retry him for harboring illegal aliens.

The crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border is worsening — as was made clear by journalist Julia Le Duc’s photo of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martínez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, both of whom drowned crossing the Rio Grande River. Related

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But more arrests of humanitarian workers, increased militarization along the border, shooting and draining water stations in the desert and threatening other countries with increased tariffs will not end the migration of people to this country. What is needed is equitable and sustainable investment in developing countries, as well as a compassionate approach to care for those detained at the border or who cross into the U.S.

It is important that we engage in creative care and resistance through our art, prayers, advocacy, physical presence and support of groups such as No More Deaths, making clear that unjust treatment of migrants and those who help them is not acceptable nor in line with our principles of democracy and justice.

As No More Deaths said in response to the arrest of Dr. Warren, the attacks on him and other aid workers “aren’t an attack just on No More Deaths, they are an attack on the very fabric of a civil society that recognizes and upholds the value of every human being. They are an attack on the values shared by an individual of conscience who would stop to help someone in need. They are an attack on the bonds of care, respect and love that are what makes life itself worth living.”

As such, we must speak out and act, for as Saint Óscar Romero said, “The ones who have a voice must speak for those who are voiceless.”

Leslie is executive director of Rothko Chapel.