Is there any room in Donald Trump’s America for people to act like human beings?

Or are we now to do unto others only if we first determine that those others have proper documentation?

A jury in Pima County will answer those questions later this month as they determine the fate of a 36-year-old Ajo man caught helping a pair of Central American migrants.

For his crimes – basically offering food, water and shelter and later pointing to some mountains – Scott Warren could be facing 20 years in prison.

This, in America.

Is this who we are becoming?

Warren’s trial, which got under way last week in U.S. District Court in Tucson, is capturing nationwide attention, as it should.

It says something, I think, about who we are. Or perhaps who we are becoming.

The Arizona Daily Star examined each of the 119 human-smuggling cases filed in Tucson during the first half of last year. Of those, 118 cases involved people smuggling immigrants into the country for profit.

The other one was brought in January 2018 against Warren, who volunteers a good portion of his time putting out water jugs and food for migrants in the unforgiving southern Arizona desert.

He does it not out of a profit motive but out of a belief that helping his fellow man is the good and right thing to do.

Warren gave a guy food and water

Warren is a long-time volunteer with No More Deaths, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson.

He contends that he arrived at “the Barn”, a ramshackle house on the outskirts of Ajo that is used as a staging area by the non-profit, to find two Central American migrants. They were thirsty and hungry, he said, and one of them had blisters on his feet from two days of walking through the desert.

So he gave them food and water and a place to stay and called a doctor, who advised they should rest for a few days and be watched for signs of dehydration.

Various volunteers would be in and out of the house over the next few days, seeing to the men’s needs. Warren was there again on the third day, when the Border Patrol was watching the place.

Pointing is a sign of smuggling?

Border Patrol agents testified they saw Warren emerge from the house with the two migrants, pointing toward mountains north of town. They took that to mean Warren was showing them how to avoid a Border Patrol checkpoint on State Route 85.

The officers, who said they staked out the place after receiving reports that migrants were in the area, arrested the two migrants for crossing into the country illegally. Then they arrested Warren for helping them.

He was charged with one count of conspiracy to transport and harbor the men and two counts of harboring undocumented immigrants.

His arrest, by the way, came just hours after No More Deaths released a video showing Border Patrol agents destroying water jugs in the desert.

Mere coincidence, I’m sure.

No amnesty for following your conscience

Warren’s attorney, Greg Kuykendall, told jurors last week his client knows where the line is between legal and illegal behavior and “never gave them anything besides basic human kindness.”

“Scott is a law-abiding, life-giving Good Samaritan,” he said.

Prosecutors see it more as a felonious behavior.

“This case is not about humanitarian aid,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Walters told the jury, adding that Warren opted “to shield illegal aliens from law enforcement for several days.”

Walters contends Warren talked by phone with activist Irineo Mujica who later drove the migrants to the Barn. Records show that conversation occurred three days before the migrants arrived.

Kuykendall counters he was speaking to Mujica about recovering the remains of some border crossers and that his client arrived at the barn intending only to make dinner for a group of No More Deaths volunteers, not to meet up with the migrants.

It’ll be up to a jury to decide whether Scott Warren crossed the line by providing two men with food, water and shelter.

Whatever the motive, it seems clear that amnesty is over.

Amnesty, that is, for church-going people who are following their conscience and lending a hand to their fellow man.

In today’s America, Good Samaritans rate 20 years in the slammer.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.