cop a plea and admit your guilty and the government will drop everything execpt branding you a criminal for life. stand up for your rights and say your innocent and the government may jail you for 5 years. Original Article 2 feel law backward on aiding migrants Jul. 18, 2005 12:00 AM Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz were a half-hour away from their preliminary hearing on federal smuggling charges, when their attorneys told them the government was dangling a deal. If the pair admitted guilt and agreed to behave themselves, prosecutors would drop the case. It was a sweet deal, save for one detail: the 23-year-olds don't think they did anything wrong by giving three severely dehydrated border crossers a ride to a doctor. "I will in no way admit guilt. I do not, in no way, think what we're doing is wrong," Sellz said, standing outside the Evo A. DeConcini Courthouse in Tucson. It was immediately following the hearing, and after forcefully stating her defiance, she started looking around for her attorney. "I don't know whether I was supposed to say that." Strauss and Sellz plan to announce their decision today in Tucson, their lawyers said. Accepting the deal means avoiding federal felony charges of transporting undocumented immigrants and obstructing justice, convictions that can come with five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Fighting means finding out whether the actions they deem right in their hearts are right under the law. Sellz and Strauss work with No More Deaths, a Tucson-based organization that asks volunteers to spend the summer camped out in the infernal Sonoran Desert. They hike along popular illegal immigration routes looking for people in distress. They give out water and food. Sometimes they'll tend to blistered feet. Anyone in medical need gets driven to a hospital or the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, where they are tended to by a doctor friendly to the cause. It's sort of like an answer to the Minutemen, the armed group that also hunts for migrants in the desert. Both groups believe the government's border policy has failed and that private citizens must take action. Except instead of guns, the No More Deaths volunteers carry water bottles and cans of tuna. And while the Minutemen patrolled Arizona's desert for a month in the spring, No More Deaths is camped out throughout the summer. At around noon on July 9, a group of migrants stumbled into the group's camp. Six only needed water and food. But three of them had drunk water from a cattle tank and were nauseated, said Helen Lundgren, a nurse who works with No More Deaths. One was vomiting and couldn't hold down water, Lundgren said. She and two doctors were called by the volunteers who described the men's symptoms to them. Strauss and Sellz put the three men in their car, which had a magnetic No More Deaths sign on the door, and drove north toward Tucson. Twenty miles away from the city, they were pulled over by a Border Patrol agent. He determined the three border crossers, who by now had received water, food and air-conditioning, didn't need emergency care. And the two do-gooders seemed more like amateur smugglers. The agent arrested everyone and took the group to the Tucson station for processing. Strauss grew up in New York City. His interest in border issues was piqued by a class at Colorado College, a private liberal-arts college in Colorado Springs, Colo. The class, Globalization and Immigration on the U.S. Mexican Border, included a 10-day trip to Tucson, where students met with Border Patrol agents and migrants waiting to cross. They also surveyed popular crossing routes. "We were so moved by the situation and just so shocked and outraged at what was going on," Strauss said. Eight members of the class volunteered at No More Deaths last summer. Strauss returned this year. Sellz was born in Iowa and spent a lot of time studying and living in Latin America. She thought taking a nanny job in the border town of Bisbee would give her that cross-cultural vibe she craved. When she arrived in January 2004, she didn't expect to see migrants dashing through town clutching water bottles, or arroyos filled with trash. "I started putting the pieces together," she said, and started volunteering for organizations that aided the crossers. Last summer, that meant sitting in a No More Deaths camp. "You don't even comprehend it until you're here," she said of the summertime conditions out in the desert. Her most vivid memory from that first summer was coming across a mother and father and their 3-year-old girl. "Her parents were giving her all the food and water they had, but she was in real bad shape," Sellz said. "She was barely conscious, laying on her father's shoulder. "Those images," Sellz said. "To me, they're images of a war." The Border Patrol, in response to the growing number of deaths in the Arizona desert, has run humanitarian patrols for the past several years. They've rescued thousands and say anyone coming across a migrant in distress should call them. The federal law against transporting an "alien within the United States . . . in furtherance of such violation of law" makes no mention of medical emergencies. But Strauss feels it should be illegal to not help someone in need of water. "I'm now more sure than ever that this cause is a just cause," he said, "and until no more migrants are innocently dying in the desert, then the work needs to continue." His feelings were bolstered by what he felt was inhumane treatment while he was in Border Patrol custody. At the initial processing center, the two said they were not offered anything to eat other than cheese crackers for at least six hours. After being moved to a holding facility, they said they shivered under dirty blankets in tiny, cold cells. "This is the place where our border patrol brings people?" Strauss said. "What kind of treatment is this for people? That's insane." Sellz said women she was with had been held for days, with no shower and no hygiene products. "Women were scrubbing their teeth with toilet paper," Sellz said. Gustavo Soto, a spokesman for the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol, said records indicated Strauss and Sellz refused food at the processing center. Of their complaints about general conditions, he said, "It's jail." Two days after their arrest, the two had their initial appearance in federal court. Their names stuck out on a docket alongside names like Garcia-Miranda and Sandoval-Hernandez. At that first hearing, government attorneys argued the two should be held in jail and laid out some of the details of the case. The magistrate decided the pair could be released until their preliminary hearing. Strauss was led out of court and into a holding cell with his fellow male prisoners. He knew he was probably the only one in the group of 30 who would be released that day. "In a way I felt bad because they didn't have the same legal support I had," he said. He was pulled out of line and a guard took the shackles off him. As he was freed, the other men broke into a round of applause. "You know, pats on the back and 'way to go' " Strauss said, his lips quivering and voice cracking as he recalled the story. "That kind of support was just amazing." The two both say they want to be back out in the desert, looking for migrants to save. Even if they take a plea deal that includes a promise not to re-offend. They didn't expect the threat of prison when they signed on with No More Deaths, but their bigger fear is that the government could be halting the work of rescue groups in the brutal desert. "If we were to be convicted of this and they were to shut down humanitarian efforts, such as this one, the only outcome would be that more people would die," Strauss said. "Is that what is trying to be accomplished by this?" Reach Ruelas at (602) 444-8473 or richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com.