Category: Washington Post

The grainy security footage from the Pittsburgh transit authority shows Daphy Michel seated on a steel bench. She had been released hours earlier from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, and temperatures that night would dip to freezing. The 31-year-old asylum seeker wore a hooded sweatshirt to keep herself warm.

Over the course of three days, Michel appears to have never left that bench, said her family’s attorney, who viewed the security footage and shared stills with the Washington Post. She had a history of untreated mental health issues and sat staring as people passed by, a plastic bag with her belongings, including a cellphone, placed beside her.

By March 2, the Haitian woman was no longer sitting. The last image captured in the footage, according to the attorney, shows her lying on the ground. Emergency responders arrived at the scene and transferred Michel to a hospital, where she died that day.

It was at least the second death this year involving an individual who was released by federal immigration authorities and died days later of complications related to hypothermia. The Allegheny County medical examiner’s office ruled Michel’s death a homicide on Friday. That conclusion means officials determined her death was the result of someone else’s actions, but it does not necessarily imply criminal wrongdoing.

“The opinion of the forensic pathologist in this case is that 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,” Jim Madalinsky, the county’s public information officer, said in a statement. “Based on all available information during the investigation, the pathologist ruled Ms. Michel’s death a homicide.”

The finding comes as ICE is eliminating its requirement to report deaths that occur within 30 days of people being released from its custody, and as the Trump administration continues to detain large numbers of migrants. Michel entered the country through the southern border in 2022 and was granted humanitarian parole, said her family’s attorney, Joseph Patrick Murphy. She died before the first hearing in her immigration case.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not say what time agents released Michel on Feb. 27 but stated that she had all her possessions and a fully charged phone. That day, temperatures in Pittsburgh reached a high of about 55 degrees, though they dropped nearly 30 degrees at night before a cold front brought flurries later that weekend, according to airport weather data.

“ICE had NOTHING to do with this woman’s death,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said. “She passed away THREE days after ICE encountered her.”

The circumstances of Michel’s death echo those of the death of a visually impaired refugee in Buffalo in February. Immigration agents left Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar who spoke little English, outside a closed coffee shop on a cold winter night. His body was found days later and his death also was ruled a homicide.

The investigation of Alam’s death is ongoing.

It’s unclear whether Pennsylvania officials will open an investigation of what happened to Michel days before her death. The Allegheny County district attorney’s office said in a statement that it is still gathering records and declined to comment on any possible investigation.

“We do express our heartfelt sympathy to the family of Ms. Michel,” officials with the prosecutor’s office said.

Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant advocacy organization, said Michel came to the country at a time of massive domestic upheaval in the Caribbean nation following the assassination of its president. Armed groups violently took control of the nation’s capital while Haiti experienced a series of natural disasters that displaced thousands.

Thousands of Haitians fled to South America and, eventually, the United States. Many, like Michel, were allowed to enter during the Biden administration while pursuing asylum claims but were targeted for removal once President Donald Trump took office.

Jozef said that given Michel’s mental health struggles, ICE could have ensured she was in contact with a relative before her release.

“We know that, allegedly, ICE is saying that they are not responsible. But we beg to differ,” she said. “There are certain protocols they could’ve taken to make sure she was released into her family and community safely,” Jozef said. “None of that happened.”

ICE detention standards require agents to prioritize safety and consider “any special vulnerabilities” when deciding when, where, and how to release someone. Agents are instructed to provide detainees with a free phone call to make arrangements and are permitted to leave people near public transportation during operating hours.

The guidelines also say ICE “must provide transportation” to detainees who “are not reasonably able to walk” because of issues such as age and mental health, or any conditions that endanger health and safety.

In September, local authorities arrested Michel on charges of making terroristic threats and harassment, court records show. Charleroi regional police alleged she had been yelling in the street at “imaginary people,” according to Murphy. He said Michel struggled with undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. She remained in jail for six months. Then a judge dismissed her case, Murphy said, because she could not be prosecuted for making threats against people who did not exist.

A day later, ICE agents took her into custody, affixed a tracking monitor to her ankle, and released her.

“She was released with all of her belongings, including a fully charged phone, in sunny weather in the middle of Pittsburgh, where public transport is readily available,” said Bis, the DHS spokesperson.

Murphy said Michel lived with her brother, who never received a phone call from ICE or his sister alerting him of her release. It wasn’t until the morgue contacted him three days later that Michel’s brother learned what had happened. He declined to comment through the attorney.

Michel underwent repeated psychiatric examinations while at the county jail, Murphy said. When the judge ordered her release, Washington County authorities contacted ICE. It was unclear whether county officials communicated what they knew about Michel’s mental state to immigration agents. The county jail did not respond to requests for comment.

Murphy believes it was “outrageous” and grossly negligent for ICE to have released Michel by herself on a winter day.

“Even a 10-year-old could do more to help themselves,” he said. “She couldn’t speak English and she was effectively unable to care for herself.”

An obituary for Michel shared on the website for Hogan-Melenyzer Funeral Home & Cremation Services says that she was born in Aquin, a port city on Haiti’s southern coast. After arriving in the United States, she settled in Charleroi, a community where about 1,200 Haitians had come to live in recent years. Now, according to local media reports, only a few hundred remain, driven away by fear over the immigration crackdown and the closure of several businesses.

“Daphy was a person with a kind heart, who loved her family very much,” the obituary says. “… 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.”

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was revising the federal standards that govern immigration detention centers, one of its top contractors privately asked for changes that could benefit its business, according to a person briefed on the discussions.

Geo Group, which oversees more than a dozen ICE detention facilities, has faced lawsuits in three states alleging it violates minimum-wage laws by paying some immigrant detainees $1 a day to work. The company maintains that the work is voluntary and that it operates the program at the direction of the government.

Geo asked that ICE remove lines saying contractors needed to follow state and local laws around the treatment of detainees and that ICE amend language to support its legal position in these cases, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The company also asked that the standards specify that detainees are not employees of the facilities where they work.

The new national detention standards, which ICE posted to its website Monday, include some of Geo’s requested changes. The document says detainees are not employees “and are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.”

The revised rules no longer say detainees must be paid at least $1 per day, and no longer include several references to contractors having to comply with state or local laws.

ICE standards are the key rules that govern the conditions of detention centers, where hundreds of thousands of people are held each year. The policies, which ICE enforces through its contracts with private companies and local governments, cover a wide range of facility operations, including how body cavity searches must be conducted as well as when detainees should be placed into solitary confinement.

Geo’s input in the new standards, which has not been previously reported, highlights the ICE contractor’s influence over the agency that is both its regulator and, corporate filings show, its biggest customer.

Two of the Trump administration’s top immigration officials — border czar Tom Homan and ICE’s acting director, David Venturella — previously worked for Geo Group, prompting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to question in a letter last month “whether ICE enforcement priorities are being driven by the financial interests of politically connected detention contractors.”

As the administration has ramped up arrests of immigrants, it has relied on Geo to help it significantly expand the nation’s capacity for holding ICE detainees. Advocates for immigrants and some state regulators say poor oversight at many of these facilities has led to the mistreatment of migrants.

This month, New Jersey sued Geo for refusing to allow state health inspectors full access to its Delaney Hall facility, in Newark, where the state says detainees have staged hunger strikes to protest being fed spoiled or rotten food and not being given access to basic hygiene products. Geo’s lawyers have said in court filings that only ICE can grant state inspectors access to the facility.

In the new standards, ICE said part of the goal of the revisions was to “reduce the burden on our detention operators.” At least one other detention contractor, CoreCivic, was consulted on the new standards, the person said. It’s unclear whether CoreCivic offered input.

“As part of the revision process, ICE consulted with a variety of stakeholders, including facility operators responsible for implementing the standards,” Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “ICE considered that input alongside operational, legal, and policy requirements when making a final decision on the standards.”

Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesman, said that the company is sometimes asked by government partners for input on standards but that “ultimately, government officials decide on the standards and policies they develop and enforce.”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said Homan adheres to federal ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. Geo Group did not respond to requests for comment.

It’s not uncommon for federal agencies to solicit feedback on policy changes from the industries they regulate, said Steve Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University.

But typically, these discussions are done through a comment period that is open to businesses, advocacy groups, and other members of the public, he said. ICE did not hold a public comment period on the new standards.

“The reason we do public commenting is because there are various stakeholders,” Schooner said. ICE’s contractors, he added, “are probably not the best voice to represent the people who are being detained.”

Venturella, who was picked to lead ICE last month, is a former senior executive at Geo Group, where he earned millions of dollars overseeing the company’s detention business, corporate filings show. He worked as an executive at Geo from 2012 to 2023 and as a paid consultant for Geo through Jan. 31, 2025, the company said in a filing.

Venturella joined DHS as a senior adviser less than two weeks later, and was granted a waiver from a federal ethics rule that generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year, the Washington Post reported last year, based on interviews and documents.

DHS declined a request to share this waiver, arguing that doing so would jeopardize the privacy of a government employee.

Geo Group and CoreCivic each donated $500,000 to Donald Trump’s presidential inaugural fund in December 2024, election spending data shows. A Geo Group subsidiary, Geo Reentry Services, has contributed $2 million to MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super-PAC, since last October, the records show.

Gustin said CoreCivic has consistently contributed to inauguration events for both Democrats and Republicans.

New versions of ICE standards go into effect gradually, as they become incorporated into new or modified contracts. At least one new detention center in Appleton, Minn., already has agreed to follow the 2026 rules, federal procurement records show.

It’s unclear how the revisions would help Geo fend off legal challenges to its $1-a-day work program, said Jacqueline Stevens, the founding faculty director of Northwestern University’s Deportation Research Clinic. Federal law and state laws define employees broadly as people who work for pay, she says, and ICE cannot override those laws by changing its contractual standards.

“ICE cannot magically wipe out those protections,” Stevens said.

ICE previously has made two revisions to the standards under Trump, and each time critics accused the agency of weakening protections for immigrant detainees. Revisions in 2019 removed the mandatory minimum ratio of toilets per detainee, as well as a line that banned the use of “hog-tying” or unnecessarily tight restraints.

The 2026 standards added some protections for detained immigrants, including an effort to expand access to language translation services, stricter rules around who can be put into solitary confinement, and a requirement that facilities alert ICE when they cannot accommodate the medical needs of any detainee.

ICE also specified in the new standards that facilities do not have the right to refuse any person that the agency decided to detain.

One of Geo’s recommendations, which proposed stipulating that the government would reimburse contractors up to $100 million for legal losses associated with wage lawsuits, was not reflected in the new standards, the person familiar with the discussions said.

The workers brought the copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution into the warehouse display room and carefully placed them on a table covered with blue blankets.

Both documents, which date to the 1860s, bear the original signature of President Abraham Lincoln. Both are treasured milestones in the nation’s bloody struggle to eradicate slavery, and are worth millions.

And both are now being loaned for public display in a new exhibit area under the Lincoln Memorial, which is due to open June 25 to honor the nation’s 250th birthday.

The Washington Post was given an up-close look at the historic documents in a private storage facility, before they were to be sent to the memorial.

The copy of the 1863 proclamation, which freed enslaved people in the rebellious states, also bears the faded signatures of Secretary of State William H. Seward and Lincoln’s private secretary, John Nicolay. The 1865 copy of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States, is handwritten on lined parchment.

The National Park Foundation said that the documents are being loaned by hedge fund billionaire, collector, and philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin, who bought them last year at auction for a reported $18 million. (The originals are in the National Archives.)

The foundation, the nonprofit fundraising partner of the National Park Service, said the artifacts will be on loan through June 2027. The documents will be part of a new, state-of-the-art exhibit space in the rarely seen area beneath the Lincoln Memorial called the undercroft.

The 15,000-square-foot space will allow visitors to see through floor-to-ceiling glass the massive concrete foundations that support the memorial — and view part of 50,000-square-foot undercroft itself.

“Everyone who’s been there just raves about it,” said Jeff Reinbold, president and CEO of the foundation. “We’ve talked about this for so long and now can actually see that vision come to life.”

“It will be one of the hottest tickets in D.C.,” he said. “Talk about powerful. You have a chance to see these documents under the memorial for the president who signed them.”

Griffin said in a statement: “The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment marked a profound step forward, abolishing the scourge of slavery and moving the country closer to its founding ideals.”

The foundation said the copy of the Emancipation Proclamation is one of 27 known remaining copies from the limited number printed for a large patriotic fundraising fair in Philadelphia in 1864. The proclamation, issued on Jan. 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, freed enslaved people in the states or parts of states still in rebellion, and allowed Black men to join the Army and Navy, according to the National Archives.

The copy that will be on display at the Lincoln Memorial was one of 48 signed by Lincoln to raise money for hospitals, injured Union soldiers, and the families of soldiers killed in the war, said Selby Kiffer, international senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s, where the documents were sold.

Each copy was sold for $10 — roughly $200 today. They did not sell out.

The 13th Amendment, ratified by the states in 1865, ended slavery in the United States.

The rare copy of the amendment on loan to the memorial dates to 1865, and is one of only 15 known copies like it.

In addition to Lincoln’s signature, it has those of other notable political figures of the era — Sen. Charles Sumner, Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, and Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, among others.

“It was such a big moment that many legislators wanted to sort of capture it for themselves,” Kiffer said in a video interview.

So various members of Congress hired clerks to write out special copies of the amendment.

Then, “a little bit like a high school yearbook, you would take it around and get everyone who had worked on this monumental piece of legislation and amendment to the Constitution to sign it,” Kiffer said.

“They were really mementos,” he said. “They were all individual, unique creations.”

The Griffin copy “is one of the most complete, with the signatures of the senators and congressmen who voted in favor of the amendment,” he said. (Not all members of Congress voted for the amendment.)

It is signed by 37 senators and 114 members of the House. They were among the legislators who voted to send the amendment to the states for ratification, he said.

The exhibit area where the documents will be displayed will also tell the story of how the Lincoln Memorial was built and examine its role in American history and civil rights, the foundation said.

The project includes new restrooms, a larger bookstore, and new elevators, the Park Service said. It will also feature an immersive theater presentation that projects images of historic events onto the memorial foundations.

The undertaking is believed to be the most extensive of its kind at the memorial since it was dedicated in 1922, the Park Service said.

The undercroft, essentially the memorial’s basement, is the huge area beneath the 38,000-ton structure, which sits on a platform supported by 122 concrete pillars. The undercroft is so large that the entire memorial, flipped upside down, would fit in it, officials have said.

The project opening the area to visitors has been in the works since 2016, when another billionaire, David Rubenstein, donated $18.5 million to the effort. But major work did not get underway until 2023, the National Park Service has said.

The memorial, which includes the 175-ton marble sculpture of Lincoln, was built on a spot called Kidwell Flats, a tract on the Potomac River that had been reclaimed with mud dredged from the river.

Ground was broken in 1914. The statue of the seated Lincoln was made from 28 blocks of Georgia marble carved by sculptor Daniel Chester French in the New York studio of the Piccirilli brothers, a team of renowned Italian stonecutters.

The blocks were then shipped to Washington and assembled inside the memorial in 1919.

The memorial was dedicated in 1922 in the presence of Lincoln’s son, Robert, then 78. About 50,000 people attended. African Americans, as was the cruel custom in then-segregated Washington, were shunted off to the rear.

On Easter Sunday in 1939, the African American opera star Marian Anderson elevated the significance of the memorial when she sang there after being barred from performing at whites-only Constitution Hall seven blocks away.

Twenty-four years after Anderson’s performance, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech there before 250,000 people.

And 50 years later, President Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, spoke there on the anniversary of King’s speech.