This was the first high-profile case that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona decided to retry under U.S. Attorney Michael Bailey, whom President Donald Trump nominated and the Senate recently confirmed.

Warren only loosely fit the profile of a typical defendant in human-smuggling cases prosecuted by Arizona’s U.S. Attorney’s office in 2018, according to the Star’s investigation.

Most defendants were U.S. citizens, like Warren. And, like him, many were arrested with two undocumented immigrants. Yet the number of filings in his case was only surpassed by a case of 27 defendants, involving money laundering and a smuggling ring.

Out of all 361 cases that the Star investigated, Warren was one of the only defendants accused of not trying to make a profit.

He volunteers to search for distressed undocumented immigrants in the desert near Ajo with the Tucson-based humanitarian group No More Deaths. He’s found 18 sets of human remains while searching for those who are lost and leaving food and water for others.

Since 2001, more than 3,000 undocumented immigrants have died within the jurisdiction of the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, according to the medical examiner’s office and Humane Borders, another border-aid group.