Canadian man held by immigration officials dies in South Florida federal facility, officials say
A Canadian man being held by immigration officials in South Florida has died in federal custody, officials said.
Johnny Noviello, 49, died Monday afternoon at the Bureau of Prisons Federal Detention Center in Miami, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement press release said. The cause of death was under investigation.
Noviello was being detained pending removal from the U.S., officials said. He entered the U.S. in 1988 on a legal visa and became a lawful permanent resident in 1991. He was convicted of drug trafficking and other charges in 2023 and sentenced to a year in prison, officials said.
Noviello was picked up by ICE agents at his probation office last month and charged with removability because of his drug conviction, authorities said.
Seven other immigration detainees have died in federal custody this year, with 11 deaths reported in 2024.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
Canadian man held by immigration officials dies in South Florida federal facility, officials say
A Canadian man being held by immigration officials in South Florida has died in federal custody, officials said. Johnny Noviello, 49, died Monday afternoon at the Bureau of Prisons Federal Detention Center in Miami, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement press release said. The cause of death was under investigation. Noviello was being detained pending removal from the U.S., officials said. He entered the U.S. in 1988 on a legal visa and became a lawful permanent resident in 1991. He was convicted of drug trafficking and other charges in 2023 and sentenced to a year in prison, officials said. Noviello was picked up by ICE agents at his probation office last month and charged with removability because of his drug conviction, authorities said. Seven other immigration detainees have died in federal custody this year, with 11 deaths reported in 2024.
NBC News
5 hours ago
- NBC News
Attorneys challenge immigration arrest, detention of child treated for cancer
Attorneys are pleading for the release from immigration detention of a 6-year-old boy treated for cancer of the blood and bone marrow, who is being held in Texas with his mother and sibling. The boy, his mother and his 9-year-old sibling, originally from Honduras, were seized after the three attended their May 29 immigration hearing in Los Angeles last month. Attorneys say the family could be deported within days because their attempt to secure asylum in the U.S. was cut short. Their arrest is one of many carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at immigration courts to shuffle more immigrants into a sped-up removal from the country known as expedited removal. Many are like the mother and her children and were granted legal entry to the U.S. under the Biden administration. The Trump administration has directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country less than two years, so ICE can more quickly remove them from the country. As attorneys try to free the family from detention and get medical care for the child with cancer, they also are challenging the Trump administration's growing practice of making arrests at immigration courts. Attorneys believe this is the first case to challenge the administration's use of this tactic on children. 'A federal district court has already ruled that the ICE courthouse arrest policy announced last month is illegal and unconstitutional and I think applying it to children is particularly abhorrent and unconscionable,' said attorney Elora Mukherjee, who is part of the team representing the family. Last week, several groups filed a lawsuit challenging the arrest of Oliver Eloy Mata Velasquez, originally from Venezuela, after his immigration court hearing in Buffalo, New York. He also had entered the country legally through the CBP One process. In this case, the mother had been instructed to bring her children, who are out of school, to the immigration hearing, said Kate Gibson Kumar, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who is also representing the family. 'They arrested the family in the hallway as they were leaving ... The children were really scared. They were crying,' Gibson Kumar said. The family was arrested and then made to wait in another part of the court building. Attorneys said that during that time, an agent lifted his shirt as he was changing and one of the children, the 6-year-old boy, saw his gun. He became frightened and urinated on himself, and remained in the soaked clothing for hours, said Mukherjee. There were no clothes the boy's size until the next morning, when the family was about to be put on a plane and flown to Dilley, Texas, a detention facility near San Antonio, she said. The 6-year-old, identified as N.M.Z in a habeas corps complaint, was diagnosed in Honduras with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was 3 and has been undergone two of the required two-and-a-half years of treatment, according to the court filing. He missed a June 5 medical appointment because he was in detention. Because it is acute, the cancer can progress rapidly without treatment. It affects the blood cells and immune system. It is considered curable in most children. However, attorneys said that the detention may be taking a toll on the children's health. Gibson Kumar said the children are really scared, are crying daily and barely eating. Mukherjee said that when she visited the family earlier this week, the 6-year-old exhibited some conditions that are known symptoms of his cancer. "He has easy bruising ... His right leg had a lot of black-and-blue marks on it, his left leg had black and blue marks on it, he had black-and-blue marks on his arms. He has bone pain occasionally, He has lost his appetite. These are all pretty concerning things," Mukherjee said. In an email, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said the "minor child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year, and has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving" at Dilley. McLaughlin said that detained individuals are at no time denied emergency care and any implication that ICE would deny a child needed medical care is "flatly FALSE" and "an insult to federal law enforcement officers." "ICE always prioritizes the health, safety and well-being of all detainees in its care," McLaughlin stated. Illnesses of children held at Dilley in past years, as well as the 2018 death of a toddler after release from Dilley, have raised concerns about previous medical care for children confined there. The family was paroled into the U.S. on Oct. 26, 2024, through the CBP One app. They fled Honduras after being subjected to "imminent and menacing death threats," according to the habeas corpus petition. Once in the country, the U.S. government determined they were not a flight risk and not a danger to the community. The mother was not put on an electronic monitor. DHS gave them a notice to appear at the May 29 court hearing to pursue their claims for humanitarian relief, Mukherjee said. Attorneys have appealed the dismissal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department. McLaughlin said that because the family has 'chosen to appeal their case — which had already been thrown out by an immigration judge' — the mother and children will remain in ICE custody until the case is resolved. The attorneys said the family was becoming deeply rooted in their community. The children attended a local public school that focused on the arts and had made friends. The 6-year-old loved playing soccer in the local park. The family attended church every Sunday and they were learning English, they said. "This is that family that was literally trying to do everything right and the forced disappearances of so many of our neighbors and community members, especially those who are law-abiding, should shock us all," Mukherjee said. The attorneys are arguing that the administration has illegally placed the mother and children in expedited removal and should at least offer them a chance for bond. The family should be in what is considered full-removal proceedings, which provides a longer, multistep process leading to a trial opportunity where they could submit evidence supporting their claim and present witnesses, Mukherjee said. "As DHS determined when it paroled them into the United States, the family is not a flight risk nor are they a danger to the community," the attorneys said in the habeas corpus petition, adding that their detention is unjustified. "Accordingly, the family is being detained in violation of their constitutional right to Due Process under the Fifth Amendment, and they should be released immediately." On June 21, the government conducted a credible fear interview — to determine if they fear persecution, harm or death if returned to Honduras — but Mukharjee said she was not informed of the hearing. Mukharjee said this happened even though ICE was well aware she and others were representing the family. "There are extremely, serious concerns about the government illegally subjecting them to a credible fear interview and denying of the opportunity to have counsel on the line, when DHS has been on notice for weeks that I'm representing the family," Mukharjee said.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Canadian dies in ICE jail after being arrested for staying in country illegally
A Canadian immigrant has died in the custody of ICE while awaiting removal from the US. Johnny Noviello, 49, died on Monday afternoon while in custody in Miami, Florida. His cause of death is under investigation. Noviello was undergoing removal proceedings when he was found unresponsive. Medical staff attempted to resuscitate him but he was pronounced dead shortly after. According to ICE, Noviello entered the US in 1988 and formally became a lawful permanent resident in 1991. But in 2023, he was convicted of racketeering and drug trafficking - which revoked his legal migrant status. He was meant to leave the country but didn't, so was arrested in May as part of an ICE round-up. ICE said he was convicted for trafficking Oxycodone, as well the unlawful use of a two-way communication device to facilitate commission of crime. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison in October of 2023. Volusia County corrections data shows he was released in February of last year. Last month ICE had arrested Noviello at a Florida probation office and issued a notice to appear and charged with removability. They said this was due to Noviello 'having been convicted of a violation of (or a conspiracy or attempt to violate) any law or regulation of a State, the United States, or a foreign country, relating to a controlled substance'. An ICE statement added: 'Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.' They added that officials in Canada had been informed of Noviello's death. According to Volusia County Corrections, he had also previously been booked into prison on charges relating to the sale of oxycodone and trafficking the drug in 2017. Federal agents raided a used car lot in Daytona Beach in November of 2017 and said they found drugs being sold inside the business. Noviello and his father Angelo were arrested and charged with the sale of thousands of painkillers. The DEA said at the time that the two had trafficked nearly 2,000 methadone, hydromorphone and morphine tablets. They also found over 11,000 oxycodone pills. According to court records seen by the Daily Mail, the two men pleaded guilty to the charges. The DEA said that buyers would walk into the business and exchange money for the pills. In April of this year a Chinese woman detained at the US-Mexico border died by suicide while in the custody of ICE. The woman, 52, had been taken into custody for overstaying a visitor visa before. She died in a facility in Yuma, Arizona. Also in April, Haitian woman Marie Ange Blaise, 44, died after over 10 weeks in ICE custody. In a statement at the time, ICE said they stopped Blaise at an airport in the Virgin Islands as she tried to return to North Carolina. They said she didn't have a valid immigrant visa.
