An 85-Year Old German Man is the 21st Person to Die in ICE Custody in 2026
Adrian Andreas Florian was transferred from ICE detention near the border to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen on November 4, 2025. He was pronounced dead early July 2, 2026.
This post discusses death.
Adrian Andreas Florian, an 85-year-old man from Germany, died in ICE custody at Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, Texas, on June 24, 2026, according to an ICE press release published early yesterday. Florian is the 21st person to die in ICE custody in 2026 and the first German national to die in custody this year. His death came five days after Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez died at Webb County Detention Center. ICE is on track to report 44 detained deaths by the end of the year with the current average standing at one death every 8.3 days.
Florian had been hospitalized since November 4, 2025. ICE transferred him to Valley Baptist Medical Center that day for dementia concerns on top of a history of high blood pressure, cognitive impairment, and ulcers. He remained there under medical supervision until a physician pronounced him dead at 4:30 in the morning. He was in the hospital for nearly eight months. Counting from the day ICE took custody of him at the end of August, an 85-year-old man spent roughly the last ten months of his life in ICE custody, all of it inside a detention center, hospital, or an assisted living center. ICE lists the cause of death as pending an autopsy.
ICE alleges no crime, but based on the description, he likely would have fallen into a mandatory detention category. Florian applied for admission to the United States on August 28, 2025, at the Colombia Solidarity Bridge port of entry in Laredo, presenting himself to officers. Since he seems to have carried no valid documentation, officers refused entry under the visa waiver program (Germany is a visa waiver country), and he was referred to an immigration judge. ICE took him into custody the next day and, by October 1, placed him in a rehabilitation and assisted living center.
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.
ICE reported Florian’s death the same day that The Washington Post published new reporting on how the agency treats the people it holds. Reporting by Douglas MacMillan and Aaron Schaffer found that Geraldo Lunas Campos, the first person to die in ICE custody this year, repeatedly told staff he was not getting the mental health care he needed in the months before he died in a violent struggle with guards at Camp East Montana in El Paso, according to medical records the Post reviewed. Campos asked for care and did not get it.
Adrian’s case might differ in that he received far more care than most other people detained by ICE. We don’t know for sure, but it certainly seems so. The question I have is: why? On the one hand, he’s not the first person to die in long term care while still in ICE custody under the Trump administration. Oscar Rascon Duarte, a 58-year-old Mexican national, spent months in long-term care at a hospital in Mesa, Arizona for late-stage Alzheimer's disease and cancer before he died in ICE custody in September 2025.
On the other hand, given how many immigrants have died in ICE custody without care—like Geraldo Campos—I think it’s worth asking whether racial bias plays a role here. If Adrian presented as a white German (we can’t assume, there are Black/African Germans, too), were his medical issues taken more seriously than others? He is far from the first person to arrive at a port of entry with medical conditions. It’s just a question, not an accusation, but it’s why we need to get the full story.
You can see information I’ve collected on every death in ICE custody since the start of the year.
Right, but why did we have him in custody at all?
This is beginning to look like a pattern. Are older people being detained now until they are sick enough to die? Locally, I’m hearing of people being detained who have been here for 20+ years legally and never committed a crime. They are being held in detention and given little food, no medical care, and threatened. Sounds like Germany to me. Start with the old. They won’t stop there. But we can’t let them. We have got to stop this. We need more inspections. State health departments to shut them down.