A Haitian asylum seeker was discovered dead at a bus shelter days after she was released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement with an ankle monitor.
Daphy Michel, 31, was discovered lying on the ground, alone and unresponsive, by maintenance workers on the morning of March 2, three days after she was released from an ICE office in Pittsburgh.
Michel, who arrived in the U.S. from Haiti in 2022 with temporary humanitarian protections, is the second immigrant to be found dead on the streets days after they were last seen by immigration officers. On February 26, a 56-year-old blind refugee from Myanmar died on the streets of Buffalo, New York, after Border Patrol agents left him outside a closed coffee shop.
Michel’s family and Haitian community advocates are now demanding answers from the Trump administration over her death. “How did she end up dead?” Pittsburgh area immigration attorney Joseph Murphy, who is representing Michel’s family, asked The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “You just can’t be dumping these people on the streets like this.”
What happened between Michel’s death and when she was released from ICE custody remains unclear.
Last September, a neighbor called police after Michel allegedly experienced “significant mental health episodes,” according to court records. Michel had known mental health issues, according to Murphy, noting her “extreme vulnerability.”
She was arrested on misdemeanor harassment and threat-related charges and booked into Washington County Jail on a $10,000 bond, records show.
She spent nearly six months in jail while her preliminary hearings were repeatedly rescheduled until a judge dismissed both misdemeanor counts on February 26. District Judge Eric G. Porter found there was no identifiable victim and therefore no crime, according to Murphy.
“She was screaming at imaginary people in the street,” Murphy told the Tribune. “You can’t do terroristic threats against invisible people.”
An immigration detainer on her file alerted ICE that she was in local custody, according to the Washington County Public Defender’s Office. A day after her case was dismissed, ICE officers brought Michel to a field office in Pittsburgh. She was enrolled into the Alternatives to Detention program and fitted with an ankle monitor. She was scheduled to appear for an immigration court hearing on April 16.
Officers let her go. Her brother, Carlo Michel, wasn’t notified, he told Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV.
On March 2, Carlo received a call from a local hospital asking if he recognized his sister’s name. That’s when he learned she was dead.
“They told him on a Thursday … that the charges were dismissed, and she was going to be released. She doesn’t come out on Friday. He gets a call on Monday that she’s dead,” Murphy told the network. “This is obviously going to make questions in anybody’s mind.”
Maintenance workers had found Michel lying on the ground of a bus shelter near Smithfield Street Bridge, more than 2 miles from the local ICE office and directly across the Monongahela River from the Allegheny County Jail and courthouse.
She wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse when police arrived at the scene just before 10 a.m. March 2. Officers attempted life-saving measures using CPR, a defibrillator and overdose-reversing Narcan before she was taken to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, Port Authority Police police told The Independent.
She was pronounced dead at 12:14 p.m., according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner. A spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office told The Independent that officials are still waiting for results from additional testing and have not determined a cause and manner of death.
Homeland Security acknowledged that ICE did not receive a notification that Michel’s ankle monitor had been tampered with until 24 hours after her death.
“ICE had NOTHING to do with this woman’s death,” the agency said in a statement. “She passed away THREE days after ICE encountered her.”
Michel was released from ICE custody “with all of her belongings, including a fully charged phone, in sunny weather in the middle of Pittsburgh, where public transport is readily available,” according to the agency.
ICE officers arrived at the county medical office, where “local staff refused to cooperate or even talk with ICE federal law enforcement,” according to DHS.
“Our officers instead had to call the U.S. Marshal’s service, who were let into the building and were given the severed ankle monitor,” DHS said. “However, staff refused to even tell the U.S. Marshals about the individual’s condition.”
The Independent has requested additional comment from ICE and attorneys for Michel’s family.
At least 11 people have died in ICE custody since the beginning of 2026, and at least 24 people have died in ICE custody within the fiscal year, which began in October, according to ICE data. Nearly 40 people have died in ICE custody since the beginning of the second Trump administration last January, putting the federal government on track for the deadliest year of ICE detentions in more than two decades.
Emmanuel Damas, a 56-year-old asylum seeker from Haiti who sought asylum in the U.S. in 2024, died in ICE custody last month after he was hospitalized for an infected tooth.
“Too many immigrants — including Haitian nationals — have died in the custody or supervision of federal immigration authorities,” Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, said in a statement to The Independent.
“We are calling for a transparent, independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Daphy Michel’s death,” she said. “Migrants seeking protection should never face neglect, abandonment, or preventable harm while under government supervision.”
Democratic Representative Summer Lee, who represents Pittsburgh, said Michel “should never have been left alone and vulnerable, far from her family and support system after her release from federal custody.”
“Our community is demanding answers. No one should ever be put in this kind of position,” she wrote.
Homeland Security designated Temporary Protected Status for Haiti in 2010 amid “ongoing armed conflict, an environmental disaster” and “extraordinary and temporary conditions,” with thousands fleeing the Caribbean nation in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and political and economic turmoil.
The Trump administration is working to strip them and thousands of others in the U.S. of this legal status. On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it will consider legal challenges to the administration’s attempts to revoke TPS for Haiti and several other countries.
Haitian TPS recipients have argued to the nation’s high court that stripping those protections would place them in “mortal danger.”
The federal government advises Americans to avoid Haiti over threats of “kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”
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