ISAÍ ROMERO HAD no idea how to break the news to his parents that their son — his brother — had died. The elderly couple, nearly 2,000 miles away in Puebla, Mexico, had been anxiously waiting for their 40-year-old son, Efraín Romero de la Rosa, to be deported back home. Efraín himself was also looking forward to it.

“His big hope was that — going to Mexico,” Isaí Romero, who lives in North Carolina, told The Intercept by phone. The deportation would be a relief compared to the limbo of immigration detention, where Efraín had landed after being placed in immigration removal proceedings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But Efraín never made it out of the ICE facility.

“I spent the entire day crying. I didn’t know how to tell my parents what had happened.”

“When they gave me the news, all of a sudden, the entire world collapsed,” Isaí Romero said. “I spent the entire day crying. I didn’t know how to tell my parents what had happened. I waited for my mom to eat — to be calm, you know?”

Efraín Romero’s suicide came at the end of 21 days in solitary confinement, according to investigators.

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