This Oct. 2, 2012, file photo shows U.S. Border Patrol agents patrolling the border fence near Naco, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File) (RNS) — An Arizona federal judge has reversed the convictions of four faith-based volunteers who were fined and put on probation for aiding migrants at the border, saying that the activists were simply exercising their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” The ruling in United States v. Hoffman, which was announced on Monday (Feb. 3), upended a lower court decision that found the activists guilty of breaking federal law by leaving out water and food for migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Activists in the case argued they were working with the group No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, an official ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, and thus were acting on their religious beliefs to save immigrant lives. They contended that prosecuting them violates the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars the government from placing a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion. The lower court rejected the RFRA argument, but U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez ruled that not only are the activists’ beliefs sincerely held — so […]
