TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - A federal trial is scheduled to begin in Tucson for a border activist charged with harboring migrants and conspiring to transport and harbor two Mexican men who were in the U.S. illegally.

Scott Daniel Warren says his spiritual values compel him to help all people in distress.

Prosecutors have argued the two migrants - Kristian Perez-Villanueva and Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday - never were in any real distress.

Warren's parents gathered more than 126,000 online petition signatures asking the court to drop the case, which was to go to trial Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

The 36-year-old Warren was arrested last year when Border Patrol agents found him at a property in Ajo about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of the border where the two recently-arrived migrants were staying.

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