Every summer, elderly Europeans die in apartments that feel like ovens. A peer-reviewed study in Nature Medicine estimated that more than 60,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes in the summer of 2022 alone. And this summer may be worse.
About 90% of American homes have air conditioning. In Europe, the figure is roughly 20%. That gap didn’t arise from government policy alone, but European officials have spent decades making it more difficult to close.
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For instance, in France, mounting a condenser unit on your own exterior wall requires official approval. Across much of the continent, energy taxes push household electricity to two or three times the American price, putting cool air out of reach for the elderly and poor who need it most. Yet the deaths continue. America’s legacy media, however, treat another category of deaths very differently.
Over the past year, ICE officers have enforced the laws passed by Republicans and Democrats in Congress. That enforcement was demanded by voters in the 2024 election. Millions of encounters. Tens of thousands of arrests. Those operations have resulted in about a dozen deaths, and in case after case, officers give the same account: a split-second decision with a vehicle bearing down or a volatile, potentially deadly struggle underway. The people at risk are not peaceful protesters, but those evading or impeding sworn law enforcement officers.
Each death brings lawsuits, congressional bluster, protests, and saturation coverage. Tens of thousands of dead grandmothers in Europe have never received a fraction of such attention.
Law enforcement officers at every level face tough tasks. Arresting someone who doesn’t want to be in custody is always a physical and chaotic endeavor. I’ve seen this up close through years of prosecuting criminal cases and advising police agencies after officers used deadly force. Sitting across the table from officers after they pulled the trigger, I’ve noticed one thing: None of them were happy about it. Each one wished the person they faced had made a better choice.
As a prosecutor, I’m trained to ask a question that many in the media have stopped asking: What was the intent? The law calls it mens rea, and it ranks conduct according to the actor’s state of mind.
At the top is purpose: someone means to kill. Below that is knowledge: someone knows death will result and proceeds anyway. Then comes recklessness: a person sees a substantial risk and consciously disregards it. At the bottom are negligence and pure accident. A person who carefully plans a murder can be put to death, while someone who causes a death accidentally may get probation. The actor’s state of mind always matters.
No ICE officer plans to kill anyone. Federal law, agency policy, and training all push the other direction, and the numbers prove it works: a dozen deaths across a yearlong national campaign involving hundreds of thousands of contacts.
The people those officers pursue have no legal right to be here. Many also have criminal records in addition to their immigration violations. Some, in the moment of arrest, choose to fight or floor the accelerator. We can understand why they don’t want to go back. But understanding it doesn’t change the law. And if Congress wants to allow them to stay, it could pass a new law tomorrow.
Now place each category of deaths on the ladder. The ICE deaths sit at the bottom rung: unintended deaths occurring during duties officers were sworn and ordered to perform. The European heat deaths sit higher. Repetition changes the analysis.
Recklessness might describe the first summer. But European officials have now watched the same policies produce the same body count, summer after summer, for a generation and renewed those policies every time. When you know the result and proceed anyway, the law calls that knowledge.
For ICE, a dozen unintended deaths during the enforcement of democratically enacted laws earn months of front-page coverage, even when officers faced genuine threats to their own lives. Yet across the Atlantic, tens of thousands of deaths governments knew were coming bring shrugs.
WORLD CUP REMINDS WORLD WHY AIR CONDITIONING MATTERS. REGULATORS THREATEN OUR ABILITY TO PROVIDE IT
An ICE officer has seconds to decide whether a driver barreling toward him or a violent suspect fighting him poses a deadly threat. That decision is dissected frame by frame while decades of regulatory decisions disappear beneath a temperature map. Government power operates not only through badges but also through permits and mandates that prevent people from keeping themselves cool — and alive.
Intent matters in every courtroom in America. It should matter in the newsroom, too.
Mark R. Weaver is the former deputy attorney general of Ohio has worked in and with law enforcement for three decades. He is the author of the new children’s book God Bless America, 250 Years Strong. You can follow him on X @MarkRWeaver.
