Why Did a 75-Year-Old Man in Poor Health Just Die in ICE Custody?

In a notification sent to Congress over the weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed that a 75-year-old Cuban national named Isidro Perez died while in ICE custody on June 26. The death, which appears to have been caused by a heart attack, is “still under investigation,” according to the notification, which was sent our way by a congressional aide.

Obviously, the man’s age immediately makes it look odd that he was in ICE detention in the first place. But here’s something else that’s striking about this case: According to the ICE note, the man was first paroled into the United States in 1966.

Yes, you read that right. The man has been here for almost 60 years—and he appears to have been around 16 years old when he first arrived from Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Whatever is learned about the death, those details are going to raise serious questions about the deployment of law enforcement resources under Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s dragnet. Miller has been ordering ICE officials to drive up the deportation numbers to the highest possible levels, and detaining a 75-year-old man who has been here for longer than a half-century is apparently what this has come to entail.

So why was he detained? The ICE note to Congress claims that he was arrested in a law enforcement operation in Key Largo on June 6, and was “charged with inadmissibility pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act,” or INA. It notes that he was paroled into the United States on April 1, 1966, in Houston.