His mom was detained by ICE. Two months later, he died by suicide

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Set us as preferred In May, when Samuel Gonzalez Terrones was diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia, he started seeing a therapist and taking medication that he hoped would finally alleviate the dark thoughts that had begun creeping up so frequently he would sometimes seek help by calling the police on himself.A month later, his mom, Minerva Terrones Dominguez, 54, had just hopped off a bus on her way to a grocery store in San Bernardino when immigration agents arrested her for being in the country illegally.

While she languished in detention, the family said, Samuel grew increasingly despondent.To help pay for an immigration lawyer, his siblings and dad had taken up extra shifts at their jobs.

But because Samuel’s condition meant he couldn’t hold a steady job, he spent more and more time alone at home in Rialto.“My mom was the one who would take care of him when he would have those bad thoughts,” said his older sister Sari Gonzalez, 32.

“Everybody would be at work or at school, so my mom was the only one that would be here to calm him down, to say, ‘Your siblings will be here in a bit, just wait.’” The lawyer, Arturo Burga, had figured out a way to free Minerva from detention and allow her to stay permanently in the U.S.The legal pathway, called cancellation of removal, hinged on proving that her deportation would cause extreme hardship to a U.S.

citizen: Samuel.They never got to file the paperwork.

At 3:55 a.m.on Aug.

12, San Bernardino police responded to a railroad crossing.Samuel was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a San Bernardino County coroner’s news release.

He was 21.In a letter Samuel wrote before his death, an excerpt of which was shared with The Times, he talked about his mother’s detention.He said her being taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement made him fe...