An Afghan national who spent a decade fighting alongside U.S. Special Forces died in ICE custody after one day, and the establishment press is treating it as an indictment of border enforcement — not as a reason to demand basic government accountability for all deaths, American or otherwise.
Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, 41, was evacuated from Afghanistan with U.S. forces in 2021 and had a pending asylum request when federal agents arrested him at his Texas home on March 13. He died the next day in a Dallas hospital. The death certificate, obtained by the Associated Press, lists an "adverse drug reaction" to an unidentified substance that caused anaphylaxis and exacerbated his asthma. It also lists smoking, heart disease, and methamphetamine use as contributing factors. The death was ruled accidental — the first among more than 50 ICE fatalities not attributed to suicide or natural causes, according to the AP.
Paktiawal's family denies he used meth and questions why the death was ruled accidental if meth was involved. The death certificate also lists his date of death as the day before he was taken into custody, a discrepancy nobody has explained.
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot editorial board used the death to blast the Trump administration's "aggressive and brutal immigration campaign" and demand reinstatement of a Biden-era policy requiring ICE to report and investigate any detainee deaths within 30 days of release. Trump rescinded that order. The editorial framed the reversal as part of a pattern of impeding accountability. What the editorial board didn't do was acknowledge that the same government opacity it decries has also shielded officials from accountability for a fentanyl crisis that has killed over a quarter million Americans.
Virginia joined 22 states in opposing the policy reversal. Attorney General Jay Jones said ICE and Homeland Security are attempting to "sidestep responsibility for their actions, and we won't allow it." More than half of ICE detainee deaths since 2025 occurred in just nine of the 220-plus detention facilities, according to a coalition letter. Independent investigations have documented shoddy medical recordkeeping — detainees with known conditions not receiving medication they need to survive.
Here is the real problem: government agencies that operate without transparency are dangerous, whether they're running detention centers or processing illegal crossings at the border. The Virginian-Pilot is right that ICE should be held to account. But the selective outrage is the tell. Where were the editorials when fentanyl poured through an open border and killed Americans by the tens of thousands? Where is the demand for accountability from the same agencies that failed for years to stop cartel operations inside the United States?
A man who bled for this country died in government custody under circumstances that don't add up. That deserves investigation. So do the deaths of every American killed by the cartel supply chain that same government allowed to operate with impunity. The question isn't whether accountability matters. It's why the press only discovers it when the dead can be used as a political weapon against enforcement.
