ICE arrest leads to Plainview man's suicide attempts, as his family copes with fallout of separation

A 5-year-old boy clutched his father’s shirt and cried as immigration agents tried to remove the man from his car in Plainview.

"Papá, no” the boy pleaded in Spanish, according to a video of the scene recorded by his mother.

The standoff in October lasted 12 minutes as the federal agents threatened to break the driver’s side window if the man didn’t get out of the car. Juan Bonilla Lagos, 32, a native of Colombia who came here illegally in 2022, held onto his wife and child, both of them wailing and begging him to stay. But he surrendered.

The episode, which took place two blocks from the family's home, has left them traumatized, they said. 

The boy has recurring dreams of his father returning home and often wakes up asking if he has, his mother said. His 10-year-old sister is depressed and sees a school psychologist twice a week, she said.

And the father, who has no criminal record, has been held for seven months in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails, where he has tried to die by suicide three times, according to him and his wife.

An ICE document reviewed by Newsday states that Bonilla Lagos, who has a history of clinical depression, was placed on suicide watch for a week in March at the ICE detention facility in Batavia, near Buffalo.

Trauma as families rupture

The family's saga offers a window into how the national immigration crackdown launched by President Donald Trump last year can sometimes cause severe mental health problems for those detained, but also for families who are torn apart. Their ordeal shows the emotional trauma many families are experiencing as the administration conducts what Trump says will be the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history, experts said.

Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals say they are seeing increasing cases of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and post-traumatic stress disorder among families whose loved ones are held in ICE facilities. 

Miriam Denmark, a Colorado-based licensed clinical social worker who has treated immigrants and their families impacted by ICE arrests, said mental health problems among them are soaring.

In her 15 years of practice, “I’ve never seen so much disruption and trauma inflicted on families,” she said. “It’s very sad and concerning.”

Suicides in ICE jails are rising, too. There were four suicides or apparent suicides in 2025 and five in the first few months of 2026, according to Newsday’s calculations based on a public database maintained by journalist and Atlanta-based lawyer Andrew Free.

That makes a total of nine since Trump launched the campaign, compared with one during President Joe Biden’s entire 2021-25 term. 

Despair in ICE jails

Before his arrest, Bonilla Lagos had been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a letter his psychologist submitted to immigration authorities in November when she sought his release. He was taking medications every day before his arrest, said his wife, who does not want her name used for fear of repercussions.

His detention and separation from his family have sent him into a tailspin, and he is not receiving the proper medication or medical attention, Bonilla Lagos told Newsday in an interview from the Batavia jail on May 4, six months after he arrived there.

"There are days when I cry all day,” he said in Spanish. "The despair I have felt here and the punishments are so difficult that I thought I would prefer to just rest, to be at peace,” and not go on living.

"I have hope,” he added. "But it's running out now.”

As for their children: "I think they will never forget this episode,” his wife said.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment about Bonilla Lagos, its mental healthcare provisions or the impact of family separations on children. But on its website it states: "One of the agency’s highest priorities is detained alien healthcare.”

ICE has also stated that it maintains "a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens — including providing access to proper medical care. For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives."

Tricia McLaughlin, who stepped down in February as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, has said that suicides in DHS custody are "tragic and rare.” 

"When there are signs of a detainee being at risk for suicide, staff abides by strict prevention and intervention protocol to ensure the detainee’s health and well-being is protected,” McLaughlin has said. 

“ICE requires annual suicide prevention training, enforces 15-minute checks on suicide watch, and ensures that only clinicians — not custody staff — can remove someone from suicide watch,” she has said.

Detainees are supposed to receive medical and mental health screenings within 12 hours of arriving at ICE facilities, under the agency's protocols, and a full assessment within two weeks.

Free, who represented detained immigrants in civil rights cases for 12 years and now researches deaths in ICE detention, said ICE is doing the opposite of what McLaughlin contends. Suicides are increasing because ICE is intentionally making conditions so unbearable that detainees agree to self-deport from jail or even before they get arrested, he said. 

"They're not trying to make conditions better inside or to prevent the loss of life,” he said. "They’re trying to make it as bad as possible so that the people inside detention ... fear for their lives or give up the will to live.”

'Torture' of solitary confinement

Bonilla Lagos said that twice he has been put in a frigid room naked. He said he's also been placed in isolation, which he described as solitary confinement, for four months at Batavia.

Solitary confinement is illegal in New York State for anyone with an existing mental health illness and "is considered torture” by many human rights organizations, said Dr. Joanne Ahola, a psychiatrist who is medical director emeritus at Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights in Manhattan.

ICE did not respond to questions about solitary confinement. But it has previously said it puts some detainees in "segregation" for their own safety.

“Placement of detainees in segregated housing is a serious step that requires careful consideration of alternatives," ICE regulations state. "ICE shall ensure the safety, health, and welfare of detainees in segregated housing in its immigration detention facilities.” 

A review last year by the Office of the Inspector General concluded ICE needs to improve its oversight of segregation, which it said can have "negative psychological impacts, particularly for those with preexisting mental illnesses and those with an established risk for suicide."

Several advocacy groups have also criticized the agency for its use of solitary confinement, saying the practice is used abusively, especially among vulnerable detainees who can suffer psychologically from the severe isolation.

Just getting sent to an ICE jail is "a severely traumatic situation,” but for those with mental illness solitary confinement makes it even worse, said Ahola, who has treated people detained in ICE jails and works with the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, a New-York-based human rights advocacy organization.  

"Healthcare provisions, especially mental health, [are] very sparse” in ICE facilities, she said. "There is almost no treatment.” If detainees get any, it is often from a licensed practicing nurse, "and these are a far cry from a board-certified psychiatrist.”

Polls show significant public support for deporting some immigrants living in the United States illegally, especially among Republicans. But the campaign also has provoked protests around the country, which ramped up after immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired March 5, and congressional Democrats held up funding for ICE for weeks. 

Trump says the campaign is targeting violent criminals, but Newsday has reported that less than 5% of those held at the Nassau County jail through a partnership with ICE were convicted of violent crimes. Nearly 60% had no criminal convictions or charges.

Suicide attempts 

Bonilla Lagos' family fled Colombia four years ago after he was threatened by gangs, he said. Although he entered the United States illegally, he has a pending asylum application. 

The day of his arrest he was taking his son to a doctor's appointment. After he surrendered, he believes he was driven to an ICE holding cell in Central Islip, where, his wife said, he tried to hang himself. He was taken to a local hospital, where a nurse called his wife to inform her what happened, she said.

He later spent about a week in a psychiatric hospital in Manhattan, where his wife visited him, before he was sent upstate. He says he has tried to kill himself twice at Batavia.

His son doesn’t know the truth about why his father has disappeared — he thinks Bonilla Lagos has been in a hospital recovering from a stomach problem, the mother said. His daughter knows he was arrested by ICE.

"The boy cries every day and that breaks my heart,” Bonilla Lagos said. Whenever the boy sees police now, he goes into a panic, sometimes ducking down in the car to hide, his mother said.

The daughter, a violin player, last week had her first school concert. "It shatters my soul to not be with her and my family," Bonilla Lagos said.

Mental health reverberations

"When their caregiver disappears, and nobody can tell them when they're going to get back ... it’s devastating in a way that nothing is devastating for adults because we all can find safety within ourselves if we have good mental health," Denmark said. "But kids are not capable of doing that."

For children, the sudden separation "causes long-term mental health problems of every kind,” she said. "For generations to come, it’s going be a disaster.”

Bonilla Lagos told Newsday he is fighting to keep his will to live. He used to tuck his son into bed every night — part of the reason his son has the dreams of his return now, he said.

"It’s very difficult, because from the moment I started to have the anxiety, they were my support,” he said.

He has a pending habeas corpus petition seeking his release. But he has no idea if it will be successful since he drafted it himself.

"These have been the worst months of my life,” Bonilla Lagos said. "Every day is harder. ... I wake up crying and open my eyes and look at the same concrete walls.”

Newsday's Anastasia Valeeva contributed to this story.