While there are safe ways to enter the United States, there are also areas of deadly desert that have claimed the lives of many migrants. Americans have left water and other supplies in these areas, for example the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson organized No More Deaths to provide support and reduce the number of deaths.
This group seems to be on solid theological footing, following the guidance of Deuteronomy 10:18-19: “For the Lord your God…loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” However, this kindness has resulted in arrests. Four women from the group were sentenced for leaving water for migrants. They were not charged with providing humanitarian aid; rather they were charged with abandoning personal property and entering the area without a permit. While they were released with a fine and probation, Scott Warren was arrested and charged with a felony for harboring migrants—in this case, harboring was giving the migrants food and water. While one cannot know what is in the hearts of others, No More Deaths seems dedicated to reducing deaths as opposed to having a nefarious intent to smuggle in criminals. However, their actions are illegal as they are abandoning personal property (or littering) and rendering aid to people try to illegally cross the border. to cross the border. But what is illegal need not be immoral, so the question remains as to whether they are acting wrongly.
One reasonable approach is to see this as a religious group exercising their freedom of religion. Conservatives have been supportive of companies that do not want to accept the birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act and of business owners who do not want to provide goods and services to same sex couples getting married. If it is morally acceptable to grant exceptions to laws on religious grounds to allow for discrimination, then it would be odd to deny exceptions to laws on religious grounds for rendering humanitarian aid (as commanded by God). However, conservative support for religious liberty aimed at kindness rather than discrimination is lacking. While there is a conservative narrative that Christians are being persecuted, being prosecuted for acting on kind religious beliefs is apparently not persecution.
One reply is to contend that religious exceptions are not universal and that while allowing people to refuse service to same sex couples is a matter of religious freedom, allowing people to aid those dying in the desert is not. In any case, my main concern as a philosopher is with the ethics of the matter rather than the religious aspects.
One approach to this issue is utilitarian in which the ethics of an action depends on its consequences. On the face of it, providing water in the desert is morally right. After all, the water can prevent suffering and death, and this is good. One could also use the golden rule: if I was dying in the desert, I would want the aid of others. As such, it would be immoral of me to deny aid to others. Another approach is to embrace deontological ethics, that there is an obligation to aid others who are in need. All these approaches show providing water would be the right thing to do. They can, however, be countered.
The utilitarian argument can be countered by contending that providing water does more harm than good. One possible argument would involve trying to show that providing water encourages migrants to try to cross the border in dangerous areas, thus increasing their chance of dying. Another approach would be to argue that providing such aid encourages migrants to cross the border illegally, perhaps because they think Americans are generous and welcoming. The obvious counter is that migrants try to cross the border even without the hope that Americans will provide water and without being tricked into thinking Americans are generous and welcoming. As such, targeting people providing water would not deter migration; it would only result in more suffering and death. Some claim that this is the intended consequence. Given that conservatives focus mostly on a religious freedom to discriminate, this makes sense.
In reply to the golden rule, it could be pointed out that if I was a criminal, I would want others to aid me in my criminal endeavors but it would not be right to do so. A reasonable counter to this is to contend that the people providing water are not aiming to aid criminal activity but trying to prevent deaths. To use an analogy, a doctor who treats a wounded criminal to save their life is not aiding in their crime.
Deontology does provide a counter: one could argue that there is a duty to obey the law. The problem is, of course, that there are many wicked laws and one cannot have a moral duty to do evil. But it could be argued that the laws used to prevent aid to migrants are just and righteous laws and should be obeyed, even in the face of death. After all, the migrants are breaking the law willingly, they are not compelled to enter the desert.
But providing water in the desert is morally acceptable because doing so will reduce human suffering and death. Since migrants cross the desert even without such aid, arresting people for providing humanitarian aid would not impact migration (except by increasing migrant deaths). While the United States does have the right to control its borders, it does not have the right to use the desert to kill migrants trying to enter the country and it does not have the right to use such a threat to deter migration. As the bible notes, there are moral obligations binding us together across national borders. But religious liberty exemptions for laws seem to be only for cruelty and not for kindness.