Editor's Note: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19.
His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness.
He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. "I feel in my heart that she's very worried about me," he wrote in Spanish.
A guard collected the note and walked away. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself.
