U.S. Magistrate Bernardo P. Velasco ruled Sept. 22 that Daniel Millis littered when he left the water in a national wildlife refuge. Velasco imposed no penalty, suspending the sentence and fine. Millis then filed for an appeal.
The 29-year-old received the citation Feb. 22 while he and two others from the Tucson, Ariz.-based No More Deaths [www.nomoredeaths.org] organization were placing the one-gallon jugs on various trails at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge [www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/arizona/buenosaires]
Millis had an option of paying a $175 fine or going to trial and facing up to six months in jail and up to $5,000 in fines if found guilty. He chose the trial.
“I still believe humanitarian aid is never a crime and this ruling says that it is,” Millis told the Presbyterian News Service on Tuesday (Oct. 21). “It says that leaving drinking water for a thirsty maybe even a dying person constitutes a crime of littering and I disagree.”
Millis was not certain when the appeal would be heard.
No More Deaths, whose founders include two former Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly moderators, regularly helps undocumented border crossers in Arizona’s borderlands near Mexico by offering them food, water, and medical assistance.
Millis, who was raised in a Methodist-Presbyterian federated church, said the verdict was offensive because No More Deaths collects trash and empty water bottles when dropping off new ones.
“We believe we do a good job with our humanitarian aid,” said Millis, a native of Flagstaff, Ariz., who currently resides in Tucson. “We pick up trash, we try to mitigate any environmental impact our work might have and we’re out there on the trails trying to help people all summer, 24 hours a day seven days a week.”
Walt Staton, a volunteer with No More Deaths, vowed the organization would continue its humanitarian aid work in the desert regardless of the outcome of the Millis case.
“We’re committed to continuing humanitarian aid and we view that it’s not a crime to do things that help save peoples’ lives,” Staton told the Presbyterian News Service.
Millis, a former high school Spanish teacher, was on sabbatical with No More Deaths at the time he was cited. He is now a part-time volunteer for the faith-based aid organization and recently started a new job as borderlands campaign organizer for the Sierra Club, the largest and oldest environmental conservation group in the United States.
He said he left the 22 water jugs in the desert two days after he found the body of a 14-year-old immigrant girl from El Salvador who had died of exposure.
Presbyterian leaders in Arizona were instrumental in helping form No More Deaths, which is led and supported by PC(USA) members and congregations, among them St. Mark’s Church and Southside Church, both in Tucson.
Founding members of the organization include John Fife, retired pastor of Southside Church who was General Assembly moderator in 1992, and Rick Ufford-Chase, the 2004 GA moderator who for years worked along the Arizona-Mexico border as a mission co-worker for the denomination. Ufford-Chase also co-founded Borderlinks, an educational and advocacy organization along the border.
The Buenos Aires refuge is located in southern Arizona along the border with Mexico, about 45 miles southwest of Tucson. It was established in 1985 to preserve and restore the largest ungrazed grassland in Arizona as well as wildlife such as the endangered masked bobwhite quail.
Officials with the 117,000-acre refuge, who could not be immediately reached for comment, have said they will continue to cite anyone caught littering on the refuge, including people leaving full bottles of water for migrants. There are concerns the plastic jugs can be harmful to animals, along with the tons of trash on the refuge left by illegal immigrants.
“The penalty isn’t the point. The point is if you are on the refuge, we don’t allow littering,” Sally Gall, assistant manager at Buenos Aires, told the Arizona Daily Star after the ruling. “We will continue to enforce that. I think the decision is the correct one.”
