James A. Corbett; Led Central American Refugees to U.S.

James A. Corbett, 67, a founder of a movement that brought hundreds of thousands of Central American refugees to the United States, died Thursday at his home in Cascabel, Ariz.

Corbett co-founded the Sanctuary Movement in Tucson with the Rev. John Fife in 1981.The Wyoming-born rancher personally guided hundreds of Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing civil war through Mexico to Tucson in the early 1980s.

The Sanctuary Movement spread across the U.S. and Canada and resulted in Corbett’s indictment in 1985 for smuggling Central Americans into the U.S. In 1986, a jury convicted eight defendants in the case, but acquitted three, including Corbett.