On Friday, Edwin Jeovanny Lopez Cornejo called his mother from inside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey. He told her he didn’t feel well. Part of his face and his right hand had gone numb.
On Saturday, he was gone.
This is the second time in eight months that a family lost a loved one in Delaney Hall.
Scripps News recently reported on a 2-month-old detained at Dilly Detention Center in Texas, who developed bronchitis, became extremely ill, and lost consciousness before being transported to a hospital. Upon discharge, the baby was returned to Dilley. What are we doing?
ICE confirmed Monday that Lopez Cornejo experienced what the agency called a medical emergency and was pronounced dead August 1 at University Hospital in Newark.
The official cause of death is pending a medical examination.
The agency says its staff did everything right. Almost everyone else who has looked inside that building says otherwise.
About Edwin
He was not a statistic, and he was not the caricature DHS puts in its press releases.
Lopez Cornejo came to the United States from El Salvador as a teenager and had been here roughly two decades.
He lived in Plainfield. He worked as a landscaper and in a warehouse in Jackson.
He had a 12-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen.
According to The City Reporter, his attorney said he had no criminal history, and colleagues had submitted written statements supporting his release as part of a federal habeas corpus lawsuit still pending when he died.
There is a discrepancy in his age between ICE and legal filings. ICE lists him as 41, while his legal filings put him at 39.
Small detail, but it says something that the agency holding him couldn’t reliably say how old he was.
ICE arrested him June 18 in Plainfield. He was walking to pick up his car from a towing company.
He was held at Delaney Hall under a reinstated removal order from 2006, when he was 18 years old.
Six weeks later he was gone.
What His Family Says Happened
Lopez Cornejo’s mother, María Cornejo, described her son’s death in a Facebook video posted by immigrant rights groups.
She said the hospital called to tell her he was dead, and that his heart had already stopped when he arrived. She said she had spoken to him the day before, when he told her about the numbness.
Al Jazeera reported that his family says he lived with diabetes, high blood pressure and seizures — and that advocates say he was denied his medication inside Delaney Hall.
His mother’s plea, reported by Common Dreams, was simple: “I don’t want my son’s death to go unanswered.”
ICE’s account is that facility and medical staff responded immediately, called 911, and that he received proper medical care throughout his detention.
The agency also maintains that everyone in custody is medically screened within hours of arrival and has round-the-clock access to emergency care.
Both things cannot be true. Either a man with three managed chronic conditions was giiven his medication, or he wasn’t.
The Response
Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she was deeply disturbed and that his loved ones deserve answers. In her statement, she said her administration is working with New Jersey’s congressional delegation to gather the facts — and she pointed directly at the obstruction her own health inspectors keep running into.
She called the death “another painful reminder of why Delaney Hall should be closed.”
The obstruction isn’t rhetorical. In May, Sherrill said state health inspectors were denied full access and permitted to see only part of the facility.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who has been fighting GEO Group in court over the facility for more than a year, called the death a heartbreaking consequence of a facility operating without real oversight.
Sen. Cory Booker was blunt: “Delaney Hall must be closed immediately and permanently.”
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman went further than anyone.
In her statement, she said that if Lopez Cornejo was indeed denied his medication, “the operators at Delaney Hall should be charged with homicide.”
She has formally requested that ICE turn over the medical emergency timeline, his medication and treatment records, proof that family notification procedures were followed, and any incident reports or oversight reviews. 👏
Rep. Rob Menendez showed up at Delaney Hall for an unannounced oversight visit hours after the news broke.
He later said ICE could not answer his medical questions — that he and the family would have to formally request the records.
Rep. LaMonica McIver, who faced federal charges after her own oversight visit to the facility, said cruelty is at the core of Delaney Hall.
And Amol Sinha of the ACLU of New Jersey called for accountability, closure, and “an end to immigration detention once and for all.”
The Number Nobody in This Administration Wants to Say
At least 56 people have died in ICE custody during Donald Trump’s second term, according to Associated Press tracking.
More people died in ICE custody in 2025 than in any year in at least two decades. 2026 is on pace to be worse.
The first death at Delaney Hall was Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian man who collapsed in December, one day after arriving.
A medical examiner ruled it a natural death caused by a lung blockage. Witnesses said the ambulance carrying him was held at the gate while a van of newly detained people was processed first.
Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, a private prison contractor. It holds 1,000 beds. Every one of them is a cash cow.
A company is paid per person, per night, to hold human beings — and when one of them says his face has gone numb, there’s no incentive to pick up the phone.
Edwin Jeovanny Lopez Cornejo picked up the phone. He called his mother. And the detention center he was locked up in didn’t.
