Man Dies in ICE Custody After Family Says Facility Denied His Medication
Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, 41, died August 1 at a Newark hospital after collapsing at the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in New Jersey, where he’d been held since mid-June. His mother says he called her the day before to report numbness in his face and hand — and that guards didn’t act until he collapsed.
“I don’t want another mother to go through what I’m going through,” Maria Cornejo said in a video posted by an immigration advocacy group. “What I want is justice. I’ll never get over this pain. The loss of my son is irreparable.”
ICE says Lopez-Cornejo “received proper medical care and was seen by medical professionals” while detained. The agency says staff “responded immediately and called 911” when he experienced a medical emergency Saturday morning. The official cause of death is pending.
His mother tells a different story. She says her son took medication to manage seizures, diabetes, and high blood pressure — and that he told her he wasn’t receiving his proper medication regimen at Delaney Hall. He’d lost about 30 pounds during six weeks in custody, she said.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill called the death “deeply disturbing” and said her administration is working with the state’s congressional delegation to gather facts. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said it’s “a heartbreaking reminder of the consequences of a facility that has operated for far too long without adequate oversight, accountability, or transparency.”
Rep. Rob Menendez said he visited Delaney Hall after Lopez-Cornejo’s death and posed medical questions to ICE that the agency couldn’t answer. “We have to request it, and his family has to request it, which we will,” he said.
Lopez-Cornejo’s 12-year-old daughter, who was never allowed to visit her father at Delaney Hall, spoke at a news conference this week. “I’m going to grow up without a father,” she said through tears. “They didn’t even let him see me one last time before he died.”
The ACLU of New Jersey sent a letter to ICE raising constitutional concerns about the facility’s visitation policies, calling them “strictly limited and enforced arbitrarily.” Maria Cornejo says neither she nor her granddaughter could visit Lopez-Cornejo because she isn’t a U.S. citizen — Delaney Hall turned them away.
Lopez-Cornejo is the second person to die at Delaney Hall in less than a year. Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, died there in December 2025 from suspected natural causes after a medical emergency. At least 54 people have died in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump administration, an ABC News tally found — more than 50 of those deaths occurred in 2025 alone, the highest yearly total in at least two decades.
Delaney Hall reopened last year as part of an expansion of immigration detention under President Trump’s administration. The facility has been at the center of allegations of inhumane conditions — spoiled food, physical abuse by guards, denial of medical care — that prompted a hunger and labor strike by at least 300 detainees in May.
New Jersey’s health commissioner filed a lawsuit in June asking a judge to order the facility’s operator, the private contractor GEO Group, to grant state inspectors full access over the longstanding allegations. The Department of Homeland Security called the lawsuit “frivolous” and said the facility “complies with all required state and local laws.”
Governor Sherrill said her administration “continues to face obstruction in our efforts to conduct a full health inspection of the facility. Every effort to block oversight raises serious questions about what is happening inside Delaney Hall and what those operating the facility are trying to hide.”
Lopez-Cornejo had been in the U.S. for 20 years, his family says. He left El Salvador because of gang violence and had been working in construction under a work permit, his mother said. ICE says he was first deported in 2006 after illegally entering the U.S., then re-entered at an unknown date. He was arrested June 18 in Plainfield, New Jersey, on his way to work, according to his family.
The Breakdown
- Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, 41, died August 1 after experiencing a medical emergency at the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, where he’d been held since June 18.
- His mother says he called her the day before his death to report numbness in his face and hand, and that he told her the facility wasn’t giving him his medication for seizures, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
- ICE says he “received proper medical care” and that staff “responded immediately” when he collapsed. The cause of death is pending.
- New Jersey’s governor, Newark’s mayor, and Rep. Rob Menendez are all demanding answers. The state is already suing the facility’s private operator, GEO Group, for blocking health inspectors.
- Lopez-Cornejo is the second person to die at Delaney Hall in less than a year, and one of at least 54 people to die in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump administration.
What This Means for You
This is the administration you voted for or against in 2024 carrying out the detention and deportation policy it ran on. When a federal agency detains someone under that policy and that person dies in custody, with his family alleging the facility denied him medication — that’s not a local incident, it’s the actual outcome of how that policy is being executed. The question for you as a voter is whether the administration’s enforcement approach, and the private contractors it uses to run facilities like Delaney Hall, are operating with the oversight and accountability you expect — or whether stories like this one are the cost of how the system actually works.
Immigration enforcement happens here in Fresno and across the Central Valley every day. The same agency, the same policies, the same kind of detention facilities. This death happened in New Jersey, but the accountability question — who answers when someone dies in federal custody, and what that says about the administration running the system — is one you’re weighing every time you vote for President or Congress.
What You Can Do
If you want to weigh in on how ICE operates detention facilities or handles medical care for people in custody, contact your member of Congress — they oversee the Department of Homeland Security’s budget and can demand answers or push for policy changes. Rep. Jim Costa represents California’s 21st District (Fresno and parts of the Central Valley); Rep. David Valadao represents the 22nd District (parts of Fresno, Tulare, and Kings counties). Both can be reached through their official House websites.
What to Watch
ICE says the cause of death is “pending further medical examination” — that examination is being done by someone, and the family is demanding those medical records be released. Will they be? And if they are, will they show Lopez-Cornejo received the medication his mother says he needed, or not?
The family is also calling for an independent investigation, not just ICE investigating itself. New Jersey’s governor says her administration is “working with the congressional delegation to gather all the facts” — but the state is already in court trying to force the facility to let health inspectors in, and the federal government is fighting that lawsuit. So the accountability question here is concrete: will anyone outside ICE and GEO Group actually get to see what happened, or will this stay an internal review?
Bigger picture: this is the second death at Delaney Hall in eight months, and one of more than 50 in ICE custody in 2025 alone — the highest yearly total in at least two decades. That’s not an accident, it’s a pattern tied to how many people the administration is detaining and how fast. The question a voter watching this has to ask is whether that’s an acceptable cost of the enforcement policy, or whether it’s evidence the system is being pushed past what it can safely handle. Elected officials set that policy; voters decide whether they keep doing it.
