Ben Cowles
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A US judge banned a humanitarian activist from mentioning President Donald Trump in court yesterday, where he stands accused of harbouring undocumented migrants in the country illegally.
Dr Scott Warren, 37, appeared in Tucson Federal Court in Arizona for a second time this year on Tuesday after the first ended in a deadlocked jury in July.
US district court judge Raner Collins passed the prosecutors’ motion to forbid Dr Warren mentioning the far-right president.
“There should be no politics in this case. I’m not going to allow it,” Collins said.
Dr Warren is one of nine activists with the humanitarian group No More Deaths, which leaves bottles of water in the desert, searches for injured or dead refugees and provides aid to people making the dangerous crossing.
He is the only member of the group on trial and faces 20 years in jail if found guilty.
The activist group says the charges against Dr Warren are “a marked escalation of an already deadly strategy of hyper-border militarisation and prevention through deterrence.”
No More Deaths is also putting together a three-part investigation online into how the US border enforcement agencies are fuelling a missing persons crisis, destroying humanitarian aid and ignoring emergency calls.
Parts one and two are available at thedisappearedreport.org.
