Good morning. The family of a Canadian man who died in ICE custody are grieving and seeking answers about why he was detained, unreachable, and if he had access to his medication. More on that below, plus updates from the Middle East and a lost message that has been found.

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• Alberta to ban books deemed sexually explicit from school libraries and restrict materials about puberty
• Moscow unleashed heavy air strikes on Ukraine ahead of U.S.-Russia talks with a frustrated Washington

Hi, I’m Janice Dickson, and I cover international affairs for The Globe. I recently went to Daytona Beach to find out what happened to a Canadian who died in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Two weeks ago, U.S. immigration officials announced that a 49-year old Canadian citizen, Johnny Noviello, died in detention. ICE said that he had been detained for five weeks, and the cause of his death was under investigation. There were few details provided.

Noviello had lived near Daytona Beach for most of his life. He moved to the area with his family as a child and established his life there. But in 2023, he was convicted of several drug-related charges, changing the course of his life. Noviello wasn’t a U.S. citizen. And in the U.S., non-U.S. citizens who are convicted of drug offences can be deported.

President Trump’s crackdown on immigrants has led to increased ICE raids, detentions and deportations. The White House has directed ICE to arrest at least 3,000 people per day.

It is one thing for Noviello to face deportation to Canada, it’s quite another for him to spend five weeks incarcerated only to die before he was able to reunite with family in Montreal and start a new life.

Investigative reporters Kathryn Blaze Baum, Sara Mojtehedzadeh and I set out to uncover what happened to him. I travelled to speak with his relatives, friends, co-workers and former criminal-defence lawyer.

Kathryn and Sara reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents dating back to the early 1990’s, interviewed immigration lawyers and experts from across the United States, and uncovered government records detailing the troubling conditions in immigration detention centres.

And they also sought answers from officials, requesting records from Miami Fire Rescue Department, which responded to the 911 call the day Johnny died, contacting ICE repeatedly as well as the Bureau of Prisons, the federal agency responsible for the jail in Miami where Noviello was held and ultimately died.

No officials provided us with any explanation about why Noviello was detained for 40 days.

We also sought answers from Global Affairs Canada. The day that ICE announced Noviello had died, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand wrote on social media that the federal government was pressing for answers. Two weeks later, it’s not clear what the government is doing. Global Affairs will only say that consular officials remain in contact with U.S. authorities.

In Florida, I found a grieving family searching for answers. When I went to Noviello’s dad’s autoshop, Daytona Auto Sales, I found Angelo Noviello, 80, sitting alone in his office.

The first thing he said to me was that his son would have been 50 that day. It was Canada Day. He said that he had been so worried about his son accessing medication, because he had epilepsy, that the day he was picked up by ICE and taken to Orlando, he drove his epilepsy medication there. Noviello was later transferred to Miami.

He had one brief phone call with his son but couldn’t reach him for the remainder of his five weeks in detention. He and Noviello’s other relatives and friends are desperate for answers. They’re concerned that his epilepsy condition contributed to his death and they want to know why they couldn’t access him for the five weeks he was detained.

In the end, our reporting found that Noviello’s prolonged detention in a prison with a disturbing record shouldn’t have happened. And the U.S. immigration system is not prepared to handle the increasing number of people waiting to be deported.

This is the story about a man who got swept up in the Trump administration’s intense immigration crackdown and a deeply flawed system that shows no signs of transparency when it comes to how Noviello was treated or his death.

Concerns and the hunt for answers are becoming more pressing. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has approved another US$30-billion toward more arrests and deportations.