Border activist on trial for leaving water for migrants

This is taken from the press release today

"Trial for Border Volunteer, Cited for Littering while Picking Up Trash"

A humanitarian aid volunteer goes to federal court Friday over a littering
citation received while picking up trash along the Arizona – Mexico
border. No More Deaths volunteer Dan Millis, 29, has entered a plea of
not guilty to the Class B Misdemeanor offense of littering on a National
Wildlife Refuge. He faces a maximum penalty of six months in jail and/or
$5,000 in fines.

The trial is this Friday, July 25, at 9:30 a.m., at the DeConcini federal
courthouse, 405 W. Congress, in Tucson. A press conference will be held
in front of the courthouse at noon or immediately following the trial.

Millis and three other humanitarian aid volunteers were picking up trash
and leaving jugs of drinking water along border trails in Brown Canyon
north of Sasabe on February 22, 2008, when they were confronted by U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement. Officers informed volunteers that they
could neither leave water nor recover trash without proper permits, and
Millis was presented with a $175 ticket for littering.

“I felt especially compelled to leave drinking water out that day, because
only two days earlier I found the body of a young girl in the desert. She
was only fourteen,” states Millis. “It was heartbreaking.”

238 migrants were found dead in the Arizona borderlands during the 2007
fiscal year. During the summer of 2007, No More Deaths encountered 388
migrants along the Arizona – Mexico border, including twenty seven women,
fourteen children, and one pregnant seventeen-year-old. Many required
serious medical attention. No More Deaths has been working to provide
humanitarian aid to people along the border since 2004, including the
Brown Canyon area where Millis was cited.

For more information, please visit www.nomoredeaths.org, write us at
action@nomoredeaths.org, or (928) 821-0331.