ICE detainees’ deaths raise questions about news coverage of Asian communities
April 15, 2026
This column is part of the Indianapolis Public Editor project, a pilot program designed to test whether the presence of a public editor who analyzes local coverage can elevate audience trust in journalism and promote media literacy.
Despite the recent deaths of two Asian American immigrants in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the correctional facility in Bunker Hill, voices from Indianapolis’ Asian community have been missing from news coverage.
In fact, it’s easier to find a restaurant review of the city’s Asian cuisine than it is to know what’s going on in that community, based on local coverage.
On April 1, Tuan Van Bui, 55, was the 48th person to die in ICE custody during the current administration. He was the second person to die at Indiana’s immigration detention center, the Miami Correctional Facility, which ICE has been using since October 2025. A detainee originally from Cambodia, Lorth Sim, 59, died in custody on Feb. 16 of cardiovascular disease and diabetes complications. Bui’s death is still under investigation.
U.S. Rep. André Carson called for a full investigation into both deaths and raised concerns about poor conditions at the facility after a tour of it on April 9.
Most of Indy’s news outlets are covering immigration policy issues, especially Senate Bill 76 (the FAIRNESS Act), which passed this year. That measure requires local governments to cooperate with ICE.
Here’s how some local outlets have approached immigration:
- WFYI: policy analysis, legislative updates and community impact
- IndyStar: Investigative reports on federal DHS/ICE plans and local law enforcement
- Indiana Capital Chronicle: Statehouse-specific reporting on immigration bills and executive orders
- Mirror Indy: Alignment of state bills with federal enforcement goals and community advocacy
And yet, we know hardly anything about the two men who died or the communities they came from. No outlet has quoted anyone from the Vietnamese or Cambodian communities to explore how these deaths have impacted them or what their lives have been like since ICE ramped up its presence in our state. Everything we know about Bui’s death, the latest, comes from an ICE press release. The government paints him as a “criminal illegal alien from Vietnam” who’s had multiple run-ins with the authorities, resulting in over a dozen arrests. Even the national news failed to convey anything more than these details.
With the only information coming from ICE, which seems intent on dehumanizing the men who have died in custody, I can see how challenging it is to offer a complete story. That challenge is compounded by the fact that journalists in our community do not appear to have strong connections to our Asian American communities.
Most of the stories that we news consumers get about Asians in Indy are about food and festivals, something my journalism mentors called “zoo reporting.” This amounts to reporting on an ethnic community through the lens of the white majority, highlighting limited aspects of that community’s culture. When news stories on small communities are shallow, they never reflect the people in our neighborhoods with the respect, depth, analysis, and consideration they do for the majority population.
Treated like foreigners
Rupal Thanawala, president of the board of directors for the Asian American Alliance of Indianapolis, said her heart aches for all of the deaths that have happened in ICE detention centers. She believes that Asians are not well represented in the media and are often misrepresented.
“We are often treated as foreigners or outsiders,” she said. “Although many residents are third- or fourth-generation Americans. We cherish our heritage, but are proud to be Americans.”
Thanawala said that she wished local journalists called about the good things that are happening in Indy’s Asian community, not just when tragedy strikes, as has happened in the past.
“What’s happening right now and always with our communities, we are an afterthought, always,” she said. “I feel that there’s so many great things happening. There’s so many other issues also happening about our community that have not been covered in the media.”
Feeling invisible
Thanawala said she feels like segments of her community go unnoticed because they make up only a small portion of the population. Even in May, which is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, she said, it’s difficult to attract the attention of local media. It’s been even more difficult to get inclusive stories about America’s 250th anniversary.
“There has really not been enough attention because they say, ‘oh, you’re just 2% of the population or 3% — whatever number you want to say — so, you’re not that critical for us,” she said. “We are contributing to this society as any other responsible citizen.”
According to 2024 Census data, 4.2% of the city’s population identifies as Asian, and 12.7% of residents were born outside of the country. Additionally, the largest populations of foreign-born residents are from Mexico, India, and China, in that order.
Because members of the Asian community make up such a small percentage of the population in the state, Thanawala said her organization’s strategy has been to build collaborations with more than 200 Asian American organizations in Indiana to collectively make their presence known.
“So, just to give you perspective, we have around 275,000 Asian Americans by the Bureau of Census,” she said, describing the entire state, which includes the larger populations of Indians, Chinese and Burmese residents, but represent over 45 nationalities and cultures.
ICE’s presence in the state has her community scared.
“We can be very visibly identified as an Asian American, and that’s why, as a precaution, a lot of people started carrying their state-issued ID cards and passports — because they don’t want to be targeted.”
There are consequences for our entire community when the voices of our neighbors go missing from coverage. Angie Chuang, associate professor of journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder, notes this disparity in her book “American Otherness in Journalism.”
“For much of their history in the United States, Asian American immigrants have often been rendered invisible, or have been inaccurately lumped under a problematic stereotype of the ‘model minority,’” she said via email. “The perception that Asian immigrants are a monolith defined by high-achieving ethnic groups recruited for their high education and professional expertise starting in the mid-1960s overlooks the genuine struggles of refugee and working-class Asian immigrant populations.”
Chuang noted that the deaths of a Vietnamese man and a Cambodian man in Indiana while in ICE custody are two examples of how Asian immigrant communities have been profoundly impacted by ICE crackdowns.
“Many of those detained in the ICE actions in Minneapolis were Hmong immigrants from Laos who were U.S. citizens and veterans of the U.S. ‘secret wars’ in that country,” Chuang said. “These stories have been underreported overall, and often Asian American immigrant and refugee populations are left out of news media narratives about impacts of increased ICE enforcement and abuse of power.”
Unnoticed deaths
The two men who have died here in ICE custody are virtually unknown and therefore invisible. Journalists haven’t shared the perspectives of their families or from anyone who knew them. Sim, the Cambodian man, was arrested in Boston and transferred here. All we know about Bui is that he was taken into custody in Philadelphia, Indiana. It’s possible that no one in our community has any connection to either man, but that doesn’t mean no one here is mourning their deaths.
When communities don’t see themselves represented in the newsroom staff or coverage, they may not reach out to reporters to share significant stories. Would you trust a medium where you never saw the people around you in its work?
Stories grow cold and fade away when reporters don’t have ties within a community or connection to sources for deep reporting. We are diminished by the thin narratives we have about Tuan Van Bui and Lorth Sim. They died in the custody of our government, in a facility in our community. And yet we know so little about them or about our Vietnamese and Cambodian communities. We are all poorer for our inability to know our neighbors.
I’d love to hear from you. Please send your questions about Indy’s media ecosystem to indypubliceditor@poynter.org, or reach out to let me know if you’d like me to come speak to your community group. Your input helps strengthen Indianapolis’ local journalism.
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The Indy Public Editor is a grant-funded pilot project run by the Poynter Institute. This column is edited by Kelly McBride and copy edited by Lauren Klinger. The project is managed by Nicole Slaughter Graham with support from Amaris Castillo.