“The boat strikes are, perhaps, the most stark testament to the lawlessness of the Trump administration.” The post The U.S. Has Killed 227 Civilians in Boat Strikes During “A Year of Murders”
Page B3From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 2 September 2026
ICE keeps detainees for hours before death as U.S. records civilian boat strikes as 'murders'
Born in a system designed to process bodies and paperwork, the detainee entered ICE custody and died within hours. Survived by the family who may never see the inside of the detention center, preceded in death by the 227 civilians killed by U.S. boat strikes in a year of record-keeping. The norm of accountability, once present in the ledgers, now rests in the terminology. 'Murder' is written for the boat strikes, but ICE marks passing as a procedural hiccup. The obituary for the rule of clear records reads: 'In lieu of flowers, ask the office for the full report, and fill in the column where the deaths should sit.' The ledger's silence is the system's loudest note.
“ICE and the military are both marking bodies, but only one gets called a murder. The paperwork's got a name for every kind of death except the ones the system owns. None of these numbers land in the rulebook, only in the headlines.”
“It's tragic when someone dies in custody, but these things happen—ICE follows strict protocols, and the military's boat strikes are about keeping Americans safe. I wouldn't call them 'murders,' that's just sensationalism—did I say that? Look, the terminology can be complicated, but the intent is always security.”
The receipts
Lianyong Wei's death marks the 57th death of an immigrant detainee held in the care of the government since the start of President Trump's second term. Twenty-four of those have occurred since Jan. 1.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.