Haitian Immigrant’s Family Takes On the Feds After Her Death Was Ruled a Homicide

The family of Daphy Michel, the 31-year-old Haitian immigrant who froze to death at a Pittsburgh bus shelter days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement released her from custody, is taking legal action against the federal government — escalating scrutiny of how the agency treats vulnerable people it decides to let go.

Michel’s relatives are preparing to file against ICE, according to the Guardian, arguing the agency released a woman it knew was in severe psychiatric crisis into freezing weather with no plan for where she would go. The filing comes nearly two months after an Allegheny County medical examiner ruled Michel’s death a homicide caused by hypothermia, we reported in June.

That ruling means the examiner concluded Michel died as a result of another person’s actions. It is not a declaration of criminal guilt. Any charges would depend on prosecutors and the outcome of ongoing investigations.

The case has forced a question ICE has largely avoided: what does the agency owe someone the moment it opens the door? Michel wasn’t in a detention facility when she died. She was on a bench in sub-freezing temperatures for at least 24 hours — after six months in custody during which, her attorney says, the government had every opportunity to understand how sick she was.

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Michel, who immigrated from Haiti, was navigating immigration proceedings when she froze to death, The Root also reported. Her family’s attorney said Michel was experiencing severe mental health challenges, had limited English proficiency and was dressed in clothing that was not appropriate for the season when she was dropped off at a Pittsburgh bus shelter in early March.

“She had mental challenges,” the family’s attorney, Joseph Murphy, told CBS in June. “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.”

Her death quickly became a flashpoint for immigrant rights advocates, who long argued that federal detention centers operate with insufficient oversight and medical protections. Around the same time as Michel’s death, ICE adopted a new federal policy that officially ended the Biden-era requirement that officials track and report deaths occurring within 30 days of a detainee’s release from custody.

The Department of Homeland Security previously defended its officers’ actions, saying the agency had “NOTHING to do” with Michel’s passing. Federal officials have maintained that they take deaths in custody seriously and cooperate with outside reviews.

The family’s filing seeks damages while also demanding accountability from the federal agencies and personnel involved. Their attorney said Michel’s death was preventable and reflects broader systemic failures within ICE detention.

“Anybody who knew Daphy for more than one minute knew there was something wrong with her,” Murphy, the family’s attorney, recently told the Guardian. “It was a real dumb thing to just release her like that in February in Pittsburgh, where it’s very cold, knowing how screwed up she was. It was a very bad judgment call.”

As of publication, it’s unclear which agencies and individual officers the family will name. Murphy said accountability, not damages, is the point.