In September 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the federal criminal conviction of humanitarian Daniel Millis for placing water for migrants crossing the United States-Mexico border in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.[1] In 2008 Mr. Millis, an activist with the Sierra Club and the Tucson faith-based organization No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes,[2] had been found guilty of “Disposal of Waste” pursuant to 50 C.F.R. § 27.94(a), in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.[3] No More Deaths, along with other faith-based organizations in Southern Arizona,[4] have adopted the slogan “Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime” in support of their mission to leave water for migrants crossing the desert near the United States-Mexico border.[5] Although the district court rejected Mr. Millis’ defense that “leaving full jugs of life-sustaining water for human consumption does not constitute littering,[6] two judges on the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit that heard Mr. Millis’ case found that the term “garbage” in the regulation under which Mr. Millis was prosecuted is ambiguous, and vacated his conviction on those grounds.[7]
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling in United States v. Millis was lauded by immigrants’ rights groups, border activists, humanitarian and faith groups as a victory for Good Samaritans and peaceful protestors of federal immigration policy.[8] Supporters of Mr. Millis and sympathetic observers were buoyed by what they believed to be the implication of the Court’s decision—that “we do not want to be a country that puts humanitarians in prison for giving water to people dying of thirst.”[9] However, nowhere in the Court’s opinion is there any indication—implicit or otherwise—that the Court’s rejection of the Government’s prosecution of Mr. Millis under 50 C.F.R. section 27.94(a) is a commentary on federal immigration policy generally. The Ninth Circuit overturned Mr. Millis’ conviction because it determined that the regulation governing his conviction is ambiguous; it did not explicitly address his humanitarian defense in its holding, and did nothing to signal either its approval or disapproval of the provision of humanitarian aid to those seeking refuge within our borders.[10]
The Ninth Circuit’s silence regarding Mr. Millis’ motivation for leaving water in the desert—the desire to protect and sustain human life—belies the role that Congress, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the federal courts play in creating and sustaining an immigration policy that causes hundreds of people to die in the desert on the United States-Mexico border each year, and countless more migrants to live in the shadows once their journey to the United States is complete due to our government’s “enforcement only” immigration policies. Contributing to the climate of fear are recent attempts to criminalize the provision of humanitarian aid to undocumented immigrants by federal, state, and local governments,[11] which present a new and troubling challenge for people of faith and conscience who feel compelled to “welcome the stranger,”[12] even in the face of potential prosecution.
This Article argues that the unprecedented increase in the enforcement of immigration law—on both the border and the interior—and the politics surrounding comprehensive immigration reform has given rise to a renewed need for the provision of sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, and surveys the different forms of action that can constitute sanctuary.[13] Part I discusses Mr. Millis’ case in order to examine in further detail his legal defense—and personal belief—that “humanitarian aid is never a crime,” and the Court’s discussion of whether water left in the desert for humanitarian purposes is “garbage,” “litter,” or something else entirely. Part II discusses the current effort by legislatures in states such as Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah to further criminalize and prosecute individuals who provide humanitarian aid for “harboring” or “transporting” undocumented immigrants at the state level, including those who provide food, shelter, and medical treatment. Part III examines previous federal prosecutions of providers of humanitarian aid to migrants, particularly those affiliated with the faith-based Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, while also looking at the various forms of action sanctuary for undocumented immigrants can take. In doing so, this section discusses the missions of several organizations involved in the contemporary New Sanctuary Movement that has arisen in response to the immigration enforcement policies of the G.W. Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the non-cooperation policies and affirmative benefits for undocumented immigrants provided by so-called modern “sanctuary cities.”[14] The Article concludes with Part IV, which discusses how the provision of sanctuary to undocumented immigrants has been linked to the unpopular political term “amnesty,” how this negative framing of the issue has hindered reasonable proposals for immigration reform such as the DREAM Act,[15] and offers suggestions for how we can move toward crafting comprehensive immigration reform that puts the sanctity of human life on par with national security.
Kristina M. Campbell: Assistant Professor of Law and Director, Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law.
[1]. See generally United States v. Millis, 621 F.3d 914 (9th Cir. 2010).
[2]. No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes was formed in 2004, and became affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson as an official church ministry in Summer 2008. See Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, No More Deaths, No Más Muertes: Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime, http://www.uuctucson.org/index.php/social-action/no-more-deaths-no-mas-muertes.html (last visited Sept. 10, 2012).
[3]. United States v. Millis, No. CR 08-1211, 2009 WL 806731, at *6 (D. Ariz. Mar. 20, 2009). Mr. Millis was the driver of a vehicle containing four individuals (including himself) affiliated with No More Deaths for the purpose of placing water in the desert for migrants. Id. at *1.
[4]. No More Deaths works closely with two other groups in Southern Arizona that provide humanitarian aid on the U.S.-Mexico border, Humane Borders and the Tucson Samaritans. See Millis, 2009 WL 806731, at *6.
[5]. See, e.g., Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Numbing Numbers, http://www.nomoredeaths.org/Volunteer-Reflections/numbing-numbers.html (last visited Sept. 19, 2012) (“No More Deaths adheres to the principle that Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime.”). This stance is part of a larger international movement that asserts that the provision of humanitarian aid should not be criminalized in any situation, including armed conflict. See generally Joakim Dungel, A Right to Humanitarian Assistance in Internal Armed Conflicts Respecting Sovereignty, Neutrality and Legitimacy: Practical Proposals to Practical Problems, J. Humanitarian Assistance (May 15, 2004), http://sites.tufts.edu/jha/archives/838.
[6]. See Millis, 2009 WL 806731, at *4. In her opinion, United States District Judge Cindy K. Jorgenson stated that
Millis’ argument that his conviction cannot stand because the water jugs were of value and would have provided life-sustaining water for human consumption fails to recognize that if every person was permitted to subjectively determine if something placed on the ground is of value, no discarded item could be the basis of a littering conviction.
Id. at *5.
[7]. See Millis, 621 F.3d at 918. In vacating Mr. Millis’ conviction due to the ambiguity of the statute, the court determined that the rule of lenity applied in this case.
(The narrow question we consider today is whether the term ‘garbage’ within the context of the regulation was sufficiently ambiguous that the rule of lenity would apply in this case. Here, given the common meaning of the term ‘garbage,’ coupled with the regulatory structure, we conclude that [50 C.F.R.] § 27.94(a) is sufficiently ambiguous in this context that the rule of lenity should apply . . . . The only question is whether the rule of lenity should be applied to the offense charged. We conclude that it does apply, and we reverse the judgment of the district court.).
[8]. See, e.g., Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Humanitarian Action Triumphs Over Legal Action, http://www.uuctucson.org/index.php/social-action/humanitarian-action-triumphs-over-legal-action.html (last visited Sep. 10, 2012)
(Attorney Bill Walker, who represented Walt Staton, Dan Millis and 13 other humanitarians on citations they got for ‘littering’ while doing humanitarian aid work on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge has notified us that ‘the government has abandoned their appeal in the Millis case and has asked that the Staton case be remanded to the trial court for dismissal. This is a great double victory for us. We are now three for three against the government in Humanitarian aid cases!!!’).
[9]. See Adam Cohen, The Crime of Giving Water to Thirsty People, Time Mag., Sept. 8, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2016513,00.html.
[10]. In fact, the Court pointed out that had Mr. Millis simply been charged with violating a different federal statute, it is possible that a conviction for leaving water in the desert without a permit could have been sustained on appeal. See Millis, 621 F.3d at 918 (“Millis likely could have been charged under a different regulatory section, such as abandonment of property or failure to obtain a special use permit. However, that is not the question presented here.”).
[11]. See infra Part II.
[12]. See Matthew 25:31- 46 (Self-Pronouncing ed., Meridian 1962).
[13]. As others have noted, the term “sanctuary” has Biblical roots, and been applied in many social and legal contexts outside the provision of humanitarian aid to undocumented immigrants, including the American anti-slavery movement and the protection of Jews and other persecuted minorities in the World War II Holocaust. Additionally, Professor Rose Cuison Villazor has suggested that in relation to sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, sanctuary can take two primary forms of action – those that occur in the “private sphere” (the provision of food, water, and shelter) and those that occur in the “public sphere” (the policies enacted by “sanctuary cities”)
([A]cknowledging the public/private dichotomy of sanctuaries is useful in analyzing and critiquing current federal government policies and practices that have ignored the boundaries between public places, where federal immigration law enforcement employees typically enjoy great regulatory and enforcement powers, and private spaces, particularly one’s home, where the power of the federal government to implement immigration laws should be balanced against other concerns such as the right to property and right to privacy.).
See Rose Cuison Villazor, What is a “Sanctuary?”, 61 SMU L. Rev. 133, 150, n.109 (2008).
[14]. See infra Part III.D.1.
[15]. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2010 (“DREAM Act of 2010”), S. 3992, 111th Cong. (2010), available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SN03992:@@@X.