Charles Leo Daniel, a Trinidad and Tobago citizen who illegally overstayed his U.S. visa, died due to unknown circumstances on March 7 in the Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington.
Daniel was first jailed after he was convicted in 2003 of the brutal murder of his landlord roommate with a "Bloody butcher knife." Court documents say police arrived on the scene to find Daniel "Covered in blood." Daniel claimed self-defense but the court determined that "Testimony to be lacking in credibility" and "Found the forensic evidence inconsistent with Daniel's account of how he had stabbed" the victim, Raymond Lindsay.
The court initially sentenced Daniel to "220 months prison and 24 to 48 months of community custody." A per curiam decision issued in 2007 affirmed that sentence after concluding that "The court did not misapply the law of self-defense." After an immigration judge ruled in favor of expelling Daniel from the country in 2020, Daniel was transferred into the custody of the Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, where he died.
Shortly after his death, researchers at the University of Washington quickly alleged that the circumstances of Daniel's detention, which included "The second-longest stretch in solitary confinement of any person in ICE custody since 2018," caused him suffering and may have played a role in his death.
Democrats' letter to ICE does not mention Daniel's name.
On March 21, Rep. Pramila Jayapal also released a statement scolding ICE for "Overreliance on detention" and even suggested that "Nearly 67 percent of people detained in ICE custody have no criminal record and many more only have minor offenses such as traffic violations." While mentioning Daniel by name, she did not mention Daniel's criminal record atop his violation of U.S. immigration law.
Democrats' attention to Daniel's death received amplification from The News Tribune.
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