A federal jury in the US border state of Arizona quickly returned a not guilty verdict in the case of an activist who was charged because he gave water and shelter to two men crossing the blazing desert from Mexico.

This was the second time the US Feds tried to jail 37-year old Scott Warren, who said: "The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness."  An earlier attempt to charge Warren ended in a mistrial.

US agents arrested Warren in January 2018 for helping the two Central American men by putting them up for a few days in a semi-clandestine humanitarian aid station in the desert known as "The Barn".  Warren, a member of a humanitarian group called No More Deaths, also allegedly gave the men instructions on how to avoid Border Patrol agents.  All three were arrested because the agents were already staking out the location.

"What they needed was a place to hide, and that's what the defendant gave them, and that is an intent to violate the law," said prosecutor Nathaniel Walters.

But Warren's defense attorney Greg Kuykendall said the jury had followed the law very carefully.

"They parsed the evidence," he said.  "They paid rapt attention while we were putting on our defense and while the prosecution was putting on its case, and they decided that humanitarian aid is not always a crime, the way the government wanted it to be."