Mynor Montufar at Women & Infants Hospital on Jan. 1, where his daughter was born at 2:06 a.m. New Year’s Day.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — Two days after local media featured Mynor Montufar and Carmen L. Marrero as the parents of Rhode Island’s first baby of 2008, federal immigration agents arrested Montufar at his apartment.

Now Montufar is about to be deported.

And David De La Roca — also an illegal immigrant, one of several people who shared the couple’s apartment — is dead in an apparent suicide.

De La Roca was found hanging from a belt in a locked bedroom at 174 Bellevue Ave. on Friday, several hours after immigration agents raided it and arrested Montufar and another man.

A Providence police report confirms an account given by Marrero’s mother, who said she was one of several people present when a friend of De La Roca jimmied open the door and found the body.

Whether these events are connected is unknown, but family, friends, and some in the Hispanic community are asking these questions:

Did De La Roca hang himself when federal agents entered the apartment because he feared deportation? Was he already dead before agents arrived? Why didn’t agents force the locked bedroom door?

Did immigration authorities pursue Montufar after seeing his picture on television and in the paper?

“It’s a coincidence,” a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said of Montufar’s arrest so soon after the publicity.

Paula Grenier, the ICE spokeswoman in Boston, said Montufar was arrested on an outstanding administrative deportation warrant.

Asked whether agents typically force a door to secure a scene, Grenier said, “They had consent to enter. They found two locked doors, knocked on them, and didn’t get an answer, so we didn’t go where we didn’t have consent.”

Some community leaders familiar with ICE tactics during raids small and large in Rhode Island say that’s not always the case.

“Usually, when they are going to any apartment, they inspect every room, for security of their agents, you know?” said Juan Garcia, head of the Immigrants in Action Committee at St. Teresa Church in Olneyville. “Why in this case didn’t they do it? And maybe they could have found the body?”

David Quiroa, president of the Guatemalan-American Association of Rhode Island, suggested that only a full investigation could sort out what happened. But according to Quiroa, immigration authorities explained after a series of raids in Newport in 1999 that they typically “check every single room, and if they’re locked they’ll open those locks.” Quiroa said that pattern has continued.

Dr. Antonio Barajas, president of the Mexican-American Association of Rhode Island, said, “There are two tragedies. Hopefully an investigation will be conducted to determine whether they are related or not.” Presuming that De La Roca committed suicide, Barajas, a physician, said, “Whether he did it out of distress out of fear of immigration — I think that’s the speculation — that has to be investigated.”

An autopsy is pending, according to the state medical examiner’s office. An autopsy generally determines cause and manner of death, and often can pinpoint time of death.

Barajas called Montufar’s arrest an example of how immigration raids are separating families across the country, in the absence of immigration reform. Carmen Marrero — Montufar’s companion and mother of his child — is here legally from Puerto Rico.

Hector De La Roca, brother of the man who was found dead, said David De La Roca was 25 years old, and came here from Guatemala in 1999 to find work. He most recently worked for a company that installs sprinklers.

“He is a nice person,” said Hector. Though quiet, David De La Roca did not appear troubled or depressed, Hector said.

Grenier, the ICE spokeswoman, confirmed that Montafur and another individual were taken into custody at 174 Bellevue Ave. on Friday morning. She declined to name the other individual, saying agency policy prohibits naming individuals facing administrative hearings.

Grenier said the second man was detained “as he was fleeing the premises” and was charged after agents learned he was in the country illegally. Grenier declined to say who gave consent for agents to enter the apartment.

Asked if it is ICE policy to secure a scene by checking in every room — whether locked or not — for the safety of its agents and anyone else involved, Grenier stated, “I’m not saying that’s not true, and I’m telling you what happened in this case.” She added, “We had consent. The areas we did not have permission to enter, we did not.”

Last Friday night, hours after her release from Women & Infants Hospital, Carmen Marrero sat in a friend’s apartment with her three-day-old infant on her lap. She was joined by her mother, Lilliam Muniz, and a niece.

Marrero and Muniz gave a sequence of events.

Muniz said Montufar called her between 8 and 9 a.m., and asked her to pick up the couple’s other two children at the first-floor apartment.

When she was at 174 Bellevue Ave., she saw “about five men,” all of whom she believed were immigration agents.

One of them spoke to her while she was standing outside. “He pointed to a room and asked me, ‘Does someone live in that room? It’s locked. Do you know if he’s in there or not?’ I said I didn’t know — ‘that I don’t live here,’ ” Muniz said.

Muniz said she took the two children, ages 3 and 2, with her. At about 11 a.m., Muniz called her daughter at Women & Infants Hospital, and told her that ICE agents had taken Montufar into custody.

Carmen Marrero said she then asked — and was allowed — to be discharged from the hospital, one day early. Meanwhile, she asked her mother to return to the Bellevue Avenue apartment to pick up a car seat and some medications.

Muniz said she and a niece returned at about 2 p.m. to the apartment, where they encountered a friend of De La Roca. The friend said he was checking on De La Roca after not hearing from him for a few days.

The door was locked, said Muniz, “so he got it open with a knife. When we opened his bedroom, he [De La Roca] was lying in the window … everybody was screaming.” Muniz, who was speaking largely through a friend who translated from Spanish, said De La Roca appeared to be hanging from “some gold chains” that were hung on a nail sticking out of the window frame.

A Providence police report states that police were dispatched to 174 Bellevue Ave. at 2:12 p.m. on Friday “for a report of a DOA.”

There, a lieutenant from Providence Rescue 1 said, “there was a subject in the first-floor bedroom that apparently commit [sic] suicide by hanging himself. Police then observed a subject later identified as David De La Roca hanging from a belt that was screwed into the frame of the window.”

At the scene, the report states, police officers spoke with Elfego Perez of Providence, who said he went to check on De La Roca “because had not heard from him in a few days.” When Perez knocked on De La Roca’s bedroom door, “the door was locked but there was no response so he jimmied the door open and found De La Roca hanging there.”

kziner@projo.com