Latest Person to Die in ICE Custody is 85-Year-Old German Man – The Monday AM Quickie 7/6/26
I wrote about the defense contractor that officials across the country have hired to run their tap-and-go public transit fare payment systems, including in Chicago, Los Angeles and NYC. Immigration advocates fear the data the systems collect will make its way to ICE, especially given that the company recently inked a deal with ICE contractor Palantir. -Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
Latest Person to Die in ICE Custody is 85-Year-Old German Man With Possible Dementia
Eighty-five-year-old Adrian Andreas Florian, a German national, died in ICE custody June 24 under circumstances that can only be described as extremely weird given the fact pattern of his arrival to the US last year and the dearth of information about what happened to him for months after. Florian is at least the 21st person to die in ICE custody this year.
According to a press release, Florian applied for admission to the United States on Aug. 28, 2025, at the Colombia Solidarity Bridge entry point in Laredo, Texas. As you can see from Google Maps, it is not an area where you would expect to see octogenarians wandering around alone. He didn’t have the right paperwork and “was deemed inadmissible into the United States.” Germany is a member of the Visa Waiver Program, under which German nationals can visit the US without a visa. But they still need an OK from the Electronic System for Travel Authorization “prior to boarding a carrier to travel by air or sea to the United States,” according to the website, which doesn’t mention the rule for arriving by land. Customs and Border Protection staff processed him for a visa waiver refusal and the next day transferred him to ICE custody. A little over a month later, on Oct. 1, ICE placed him at a rehabilitation and assisted living center. On Nov. 4, 2025, ICE transferred him to the Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen “for dementia concerns in addition to his history of high blood pressure, cognitive impairment, and ulcers.” He was there for eight months before he died on June 24. ICE said nothing about what happened during that lengthy period, nor did the agency list a cause of death.
There are so many unanswered questions. Why was Florian at the bridge in Mexico, and if he didn’t have the proper paperwork, why was he taken into custody instead of turned away? The press release says the government “notified the Consulate General of Germany in accordance with international and domestic laws, as well as Florian’s next of kin or other designated contact,” but doesn’t say when. Did the government notify German officials or make any effort to find his family while he was still alive?
As Austin Kocher writes in his indispensable newsletter:
“Adrian’s death illustrates a concern I expressed recently about how non-citizens’ deaths are counted and not counted, and how they remain invisible even when they are reported. Because Adrian was not inside an ICE facility, he would not have been counted as a part of that facility’s detention numbers. Yet, legally he was still in ICE custody even as he sat inside a medical facility. How many people are in ICE custody across the country but not in a detention center? We may never know. When Republicans passed the recent funding bill, they stripped oversight and transparency requirements for ICE so we don’t even know what the total detained population is — much less have data on medical custody cases.”
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
District of Columbia Issues Air Quality Red Alert after Trump’s Toxic Firework Display
Stormy weather delayed the mad king’s plan to bomb the capital with toxic chemicals Saturday night, so he launched his environmental attack in the early hours of July 5th. It was a fitting celebration for a nation founded on genocide and slavery and whose economy is kept afloat by the exploitation and violent suppression of countries around the world populated by Black and brown people. Per the NYT Saturday night: “so many fireworks are going off in the grand finale that you can barely see them through the smoky haze. Now it’s raining, and all that’s left to light the sky is lightning.” By Sunday morning, the smoke and toxins Trump had sent into the sky prompted health officials in DC and Maryland to issue a code red air quality alert and warned residents to stay inside, ABC reported: “The general public may begin to experience health effects from elevated pollution levels, while older adults, children, and people with asthma or other respiratory conditions could face more serious impacts.” The dangerous environmental conditions were only one violent aspect of Trump’s egregious display. Earlier on Saturday, hundreds of white nationalist Patriot Front members marched around DC carrying upside-down flags, Politico reported. They hid their identities like the KKKowards that they are and chanted, “Life, liberty, victory!” and “Reclaim America!”
Tibetan Activist Sets Himself on Fire Outside UN in Extreme Protest for National ‘Independence and Unity’
Lobga Rangzen, 52, self-immolated in New York City on Thursday to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the erasure of Tibetan culture, including its language, AMNY and The Guardian reported. Per AMNY: “Lobga Rangzen was an Uber driver and had been in the country for about two decades when, at around 6:32 p.m, he arrived at 42nd Street and 1st Avenue with a Tibetan flag. He placed the flag into a traffic barrier and left his belongings on a nearby monument, sources say. He then went live on Facebook.”
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow Drops Out of US Senate Race Now the Democratic primary is down to US Rep. Haley Stevens and former Wayne County health chief Abdul El-Sayed, who Bernie Sanders endorsed and who has been a guest on The Majority Report for years. Please watch his great recent interview with Emma here. via The Detroit News.
- Extreme Weather Kills at Least 25 People Nationwide Among the dead are three children who died when their boat sank in Geneva Lake during a sudden storm; extreme weather across the US left about 750,000 utility customers without power in Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. via the AP and the Guardian.
- Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s Husband, Crashed Convertible into Parked Car, Then Left Scene No one was in the car that 86-year-old Paul struck in what is normally called a hit-and-run; the county’s District Attorney will decide whether to file charges. via the NYT.
- Explosive Diarrhea Parasite Strikes Hundreds in 18 States Centers for Disease Control staff are investigating the outbreaks, which are biggest in New York, Texas, Illinois and Michigan. Other states with reported cases include Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. via the Guardian.
SOME NUMBER
327
That’s how many stock purchases Trump made a day before he paused tariffs and screamed “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” on his website, a classic example of stock manipulation. According to Mediaite, the announcement “came in the middle of the trading day, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 37,388 and closed at 40,608, a jump of nearly nine percent on the back of Trump’s revelation.” Trump’s stock buys included Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia; Apple and Nvidia “had especially strong days on April 9, surging 15% and 19%, respectively.”
ON THE SHOW TODAY
7/6: Emma is hosting solo all week. ALL WEEK! Today she will air a pre-taped interview Sam did with guest Jeffrey Winters, professor of political science at Northwestern University and the director of the equality development and globalization studies program at Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. Winters discusses his book The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
Hannity And De Blasio Throw Down On Fox News
I am De Blasio-pilled because he instituted universal pre-K in NYC more than a decade ago.
Trump's 250 Fair Is Sadder Than You Realize
Doesn’t hold a candle to the Alaska State Fair, that’s for sure. Where’s the annual cabbage weigh-off? Where’s the cabbage limerick contest? Literally nothing fun and no animals. Booo.
PARTING WORDS
“We already ration water here in Yukon. At what cost are we going to have this huge industrial building right across the street from one of our most beautiful neighborhoods?”
– Joe Horn, a Republican, bank vice president and former city council candidate in Yukon, Oklahoma, who filed a petition to recall the mayor and vice-mayor over their support for a $1 billion datacenter proposal. According to the Wall Street Journal, data centers use far more water than they say they do: “No law obligates these companies to report the full scope of their water use, both direct and indirect. In the U.S., indirect water consumption for data centers has historically been about 12 times as great as the amount they directly consume, according to a 2024 analysis by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Experts who are calculating the water demands of the biggest infrastructure buildout in U.S. history say this could lead to regional fights over who gets an increasingly scarce resource.” In other words, the tech industry is stealing our water and lawmakers are helping.
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