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ICE denies responsibility for Daphy Michel’s death by hypothermia.<\/span>Mother Jones; Gina M Randazzo\/ZUMA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Daphy Michel,<\/span> a 31-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, was found dead of hypothermia at a Pittsburgh bus stop March 2, three days after being released from ICE custody 30 miles from her home.\u00a0<\/p>\n This week, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner\u2019s office ruled her death a homicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMs. Michel was a vulnerable adult, suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier when she was released from federal custody on February 27,\u201d spokesperson Jim Madalinsky said in a statement. \u201cBased on all available information during the investigation, the pathologist ruled Ms. Michel\u2019s death a homicide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A medical examiner\u2019s homicide declaration, Madalinsky added, is \u201cnot to be interpreted as a declaration of criminal guilt.\u201d It simply indicates that \u201c the death was caused by the actions of another individual.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Michel started the asylum process after arriving at the southern border in 2022, Joseph Patrick Murphy, her family\u2019s attorney, told the Associated Press<\/a>. She was granted humanitarian parole based on urgent need. In the year before her death, she spent six months in Washington County Jail, Murphy said, until a judge said he could not hold her for trial for threatening imaginary people. Then, she was arrested by ICE and taken 30 miles away to Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n \u201cShe had mental challenges,\u201d Murphy told Pittsburgh\u2019s KDKA-TV<\/a> on Friday. \u201cShe was arrested for at one point screaming at imaginary people, and they knew this. They just dumped her in a bus shelter \u2014 language barrier, educational barrier, and psychiatric barrier \u2014 and left her to fend for herself. The bus shelter, she never figured out how to leave. She sat there for days, and ultimately froze to death.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe ruling by the medical examiner, that is a homicide, means that the death was caused by the action or omission of someone,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cThat means there\u2019s some sort of culpability.\u201d DHS, however, denies responsibility: \u201cICE had NOTHING to do with this woman\u2019s death. She passed away THREE days after ICE encountered her,\u201d they wrote on social media<\/a> in mid-March. DHS also accused her of \u201cterroristic threats and harassment,\u201d charges which were dismissed<\/a> in September of 2025.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Advocates are now calling on ICE to answer for Michel\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \u201cDaphy\u2019s death was preventable and is the result of a violent system that cages people, surveils them, abandons them, dehumanizes them in life, and smears them in death to escape accountability,\u201d said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa). <\/strong><\/a>\u201cShe deserved care, shelter, language access, and medical support. ICE and every agency that failed her must answer for this.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration announced last week that they would stop publishing data<\/a> on the deaths of people recently released from ICE detention. But Michel\u2019s is just one of multiple high-profile cases in which detainees were released and allegedly left to die.\u00a0<\/p>\n In late February, Nurul Shah Alam, a blind Rohingya refugee from Burma, was found dead in Buffalo, New York<\/a> five days after Border Patrol dropped him off on a street corner without notifying his family. His death, too, was ruled a homicide<\/a>. Like Michel, Alam was disabled; and like Michel, he was jailed for some time before his death.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDaphy was a person with a kind heart, who loved her family very much,\u201d Michel\u2019s family wrote in her obituary<\/a>. \u201cSince she was a child, she showed great respect, courage, and love for everyone. She was always ready to help those who needed her help and her presence brought joy and happiness and light into the lives of all who knew her.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n