ICE denies responsibility for Daphy Michel's death by hypothermia.Mother Jones; Gina M Randazzo/ZUMA
Daphy Michel, 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.
This week, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide.
“Ms. 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,” spokesperson Jim Madalinsky said in a statement. “Based on all available information during the investigation, the pathologist ruled Ms. Michel’s death a homicide.”
A medical examiner’s homicide declaration, Madalinsky added, is “not to be interpreted as a declaration of criminal guilt.” It simply indicates that “ the death was caused by the actions of another individual.”
Michel started the asylum process after arriving at the southern border in 2022, Joseph Patrick Murphy, her family’s attorney, told the Associated Press. 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.
“She had mental challenges,” Murphy told Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV on Friday. “She was arrested for at one point screaming at imaginary people, and they knew this. They just dumped her in a bus shelter — language barrier, educational barrier, and psychiatric barrier — 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.”
“The ruling by the medical examiner, that is a homicide, means that the death was caused by the action or omission of someone,” Murphy said. “That means there’s some sort of culpability.” DHS, however, denies responsibility: “ICE had NOTHING to do with this woman’s death. She passed away THREE days after ICE encountered her,” they wrote on social media in mid-March. DHS also accused her of “terroristic threats and harassment,” charges which were dismissed in September of 2025.
Advocates are now calling on ICE to answer for Michel’s death.
“Daphy’s 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,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa). “She deserved care, shelter, language access, and medical support. ICE and every agency that failed her must answer for this.”
The Trump administration announced last week that they would stop publishing data on the deaths of people recently released from ICE detention. But Michel’s is just one of multiple high-profile cases in which detainees were released and allegedly left to die.
In late February, Nurul Shah Alam, a blind Rohingya refugee from Burma, was found dead in Buffalo, New York five days after Border Patrol dropped him off on a street corner without notifying his family. His death, too, was ruled a homicide. Like Michel, Alam was disabled; and like Michel, he was jailed for some time before his death.
“Daphy was a person with a kind heart, who loved her family very much,” Michel’s family wrote in her obituary. “Since 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.”
