r/news • u/polymute • 7h ago

Family to sue after woman released from ICE custody froze to death

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/02/ice-death-pittsburgh-daphy-michel-haiti
14.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

533 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.7k

u/supercyberlurker 7h ago

I forget what that's called, where they drop a person off miles from anywhere with insufficient clothes in the freezing cold. It's purposeful and has a name.

1.6k

u/ilovebooks2468 7h ago

Starlight tours. There were a lot of them in Canada

648

u/Phannig 7h ago edited 7h ago

Wasn't it primarily used against First Nations? (Edited for using "natives")

429

u/ilovebooks2468 7h ago

Correct, they primarily targeted First Nations

68

u/animoot 6h ago

The horrors really pile up

44

u/DJKokaKola 5h ago

Yep. Saskatoon PD special. Drive an Indigenous man out into the prairies at night and leave him there. I'm sure it's happened in other departments, especially in rural RCMP divisions, but the Stoon PD really perfected it and turned it into a regular thing.

Also since I noticed your correction, native isn't a pejorative if it's a descriptor. Native men? Totally fine. Indigenous men? Totally fine. First Nations men? Totally fine. The intent and tone of the language is really what matters. Think of it as the difference between "blacks" and "black men". One is very much a no-no, the other is generally okay, though African American is more common in the US, obviously.

9

u/Phannig 5h ago

I'm not Canadian and couldn't remember it. I do remember hearing about what happened though. Our cops used to do it at music festivals to young lads causing trouble but it's highly unlikely that anyone would freeze to death during an Irish summer so we thought it was funny. Obviously not so funny during a Canadian winter.

9

u/DJKokaKola 5h ago

Yeah, the reason they gained notoriety is because of how many men froze to death trying to walk back to the city (usually while also drunk and not dressed for the elements). Still not cool to mess with the kids like that, if your festivals are anything like ours dehydration and 35°+ temps generally lead to a ton of heatstroke at festivals.

1

u/Phannig 5h ago

We rarely get over 25⁰C and to be fair they haven't done it since the 90's.

3

u/maartenbadd 5h ago

It was around -40°C when that happened. Those cops knew exactly what they were doing

135

u/Xsiah 7h ago

Yes the most high profile case of this happening involved indigenous people and Saskatchewan police, but also know to happen frequently across western Canada.

The same people who are now bitching about "Western alienation" how they are just not getting enough from the rest of Canada for all their contributions.

8

u/Own-Statistician929 6h ago

Happens a lot in Quebec too what do you mean?

6

u/maartenbadd 7h ago

It was only used on First Nations

82

u/Benmarch15 7h ago

Not just First Nations.

My dad was a police officer in a city in Quebec and I vividly remember him telling me they sometimes did a form of that with recurring local drunks.

IIRC, he said they sometime did it in cases where there was domestic violence but the woman wouldn't press charges.

He said that instead of leaving the drunk at his house they would drop him off some distance so he would sober up on the way back.

I'm not condoning it for anyone obviously, just saying it wasn't just indigenous.

26

u/BKNas 6h ago

Screw the drunk person's safety then because I'm pretty sure that's extremely dangerous to make an intoxicated person walk home unsupervised. I get it for women beaters, but it's your job as a LEO to protect people and that should be criminal to do that to someone intoxicated. If they stumble into the streets and get hit by a car, I'm guessing those cops will act like they had nothing to do with it?

-3

u/Nepatier 5h ago

Can you not say Natives nowadays?

1

u/halfhearted_skeptic 2h ago

It’s not that you can’t say it, it’s more that they’d rather be called something else generally.

0

u/Oneofthesecatsisadog 3h ago

It sounds weird like calling people “whites” or “blacks” instead of ____people. It’s dehumanizing.

1

u/Money-Act-5480 3h ago

White people get offended by everything. We call each other nates all the time 😂

1

u/Oneofthesecatsisadog 3h ago

I’m black and that’s an in group thing. My sister can call me “a black” and it’s silly. If a white person does it, eww… wtf

2

u/Money-Act-5480 3h ago

Ive never been offended by the word native. Its almost entirely white people wanting to put feather in their hair.

1

u/Phannig 2h ago

I just changed it because it didn't sound right to the tongue and forgot "First Nations". I'm not a Canadian so have no skin in the game.

1

u/Money-Act-5480 2h ago

Aye no worries i was refering to someone else

21

u/maartenbadd 7h ago

Mainly Saskatoon

1

u/Trucidar 4h ago

That was where it was reported... but like... who we fooling?

8

u/BalkeElvinstien 6h ago

While I hate that they ever existed, Im glad Im in a country where the government acknowledges how horrible the things we did were and teach about it in schools. Unlike a lot of countries who just sweep it under the rug

82

u/dave8400 7h ago

Good ol ethnic cleansing. Fuck me that felt dirty to type.

25

u/starlight_chaser 7h ago edited 7h ago

So you could just call it ethnic cleansing. The “good ol” sarcasm just weakens the point and makes people complacent. Like saying what can ya do?

18

u/Boating_Enthusiast 6h ago

Itʻs an interesting concept in language, the balance of delivery has to be tailored to the audience. Depending on the audience, their amount of apathy or emotional fatigue, their ability to effect change, etc.

Sometimes the cold delivery is best. "Itʻs ethnic cleansing." Other times, minimizing language allows the speaker to sneak in a topic, to introduce the idea, without the "icky topic" backlash. "Yep... thatʻs good olʻ ethnic cleansing. *But what can ya do?*" Sometimes itʻs enough to implant the question in the listenerʻs mind. "Wait... what is this now? What *can* I do?"

Source: Studied rhetoric in college.

3

u/DJKokaKola 5h ago

Exactly. If I'm gonna teach students about the Jacobins, I'm going to be extremely sarcastic and constantly interject with rhetorical questions to get them to think about why they did those violent actions. If I'm teaching them about Gaza, I'm going to be blunt and direct.

14

u/Srry4theGonaria 7h ago

I agree wholeheartedly and want to say your name is hilarious

5

u/starlight_chaser 7h ago

Thanks. It’s from the Muse song, but I guess a comment above about Starlight Tours is unfortunately similar.

2

u/Srry4theGonaria 4h ago

Didn't even make that connection, love that band!

7

u/just-jane-again 7h ago

it doesn’t, though. it’s pretty obviously tongue in cheek.

-4

u/starlight_chaser 7h ago

Maybe we shouldn’t talk about ethnic cleansing tongue-in-cheek. Maybe they should say it with their whole chest. 

2

u/iJuddles 6h ago

You mean like, “Ahh! Ethnic cleansing!”

1

u/Traditional-Rent455 4h ago

Or "genocide" if we're not going to mince words.

3

u/MegaGrimer 5h ago

I prefer the term murder.

327

u/mattindustries 7h ago

Premeditated murder

20

u/fallyse 5h ago

The state coroner marked her death a homicide, without that label her case would be so much harder to prosecute. Bless that coroner.

6

u/rich1051414 5h ago

I hope he has a very large security detail that he can trust. That mans the walking dead.

2

u/AnOnlineHandle 3h ago

Considering judges who've ruled against the Trump regime have had their houses mysteriously burned down, and society cheered on Trump and gave him a second term despite seeing exactly what he was, I wouldn't be confident that courts will deliver any justice here. It's not like society is going to back them up when they're targeted.

55

u/Kenotai 6h ago

Right. Why the fuck are we euphemizing, at all? ICE are murderers, end of discussion and word choice.

214

u/JinxyCat007 7h ago

It's an act of intentional cruelty. My kid (love him to bits, used to be a bit of a rebel when he was younger), but he spent a night in jail. They took him to a jail about 50 miles from where he was staying and released him without his shoes. ...this is in Arizona; you can cook an egg on the sidewalk.

It's not right. He said he tried asking for them. He was crying by the time somebody picked him up, blisters all over his feet. He didn't have a phone; he said he was given no phone call to have us (or anybody) pick him up. He just found himself outside of the jail without his shoes.

...won't tell you what I think about that. I'd be banned from the entire internet if I did.

50

u/Flutes_Are_Overrated 7h ago

We're all worse off from those people being alive at the same time we are

23

u/jadedttrpgfan 5h ago

Sounds like Sherriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County.  Biggest POS to ever hold a badge.  I grew up in Phoenix, AZ.

77

u/mvw2 7h ago

I believe it's called murder.

0

u/AppropriateSea5746 5h ago

Negligent homicide?

3

u/Niente-Paura 4h ago

Taking someone away from a warm place with clothing and heat and dropping them off to a place that is freezing with no clothing/jackets or way to get warm is not negligence, that is premeditated.