A 41-year-old man died in immigration custody at Delaney Hall on Aug. 1, the second detainee to die at the privately run Newark facility since it reopened last year and the latest in what human-rights researchers and immigrant advocates describe as the deadliest run of deaths in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in more than two decades.
Edwin Jovanny Lopez-Cornejo, a Salvadoran national, was pronounced dead at University Hospital in Newark after suffering a medical emergency inside the facility, ICE said in a statement. The official cause of death is pending a medical examination.
To the family he left behind, the government’s ledger of dates and removal orders is beside the point. Lopez-Cornejo had lived in the United States for roughly two decades and was the father of a 12-year-old daughter, according to relatives and U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, whose district includes Newark. His mother, Maria, said he was taken outside his home as he left for work. “And now I have lost him at the hands of ICE,” she said in remarks reported by CBS News New York, describing her son as a hard-working father.
ICE said staff with the GEO Group, the private company that operates Delaney Hall, and on-site medical personnel responded to the emergency and called 911. The agency said Lopez-Cornejo “received proper medical care and was seen by medical professionals” during the roughly six weeks he was held after his June 18 arrest in Plainfield, New Jersey.
His relatives dispute that account. Family members told Gothamist they were never allowed to visit him despite submitting a request, and press reports have carried the family’s allegation that he was denied medication for chronic health conditions while detained, a claim CTN has not independently verified, and that ICE’s statement contradicts.
A record run of deaths
Lopez-Cornejo’s death lands in a year already marked by an unusual number of deaths behind ICE’s walls. In 2025, The Guardian and other outlets documented at least 32 deaths in ICE custody — matching the agency’s 2004 record and making it the deadliest year for detainees in more than 20 years. The pace has not eased. In a June report, Human Rights Watch counted 52 deaths in the first 500 days of the current administration and found the mortality rate in detention at its highest in over a decade, more than double the rate when the term began.
Tallies for 2026 vary by who is counting. The National Immigration Project reported at least 23 deaths this year as of July 30; the Detention Watch Network, whose figures Axios reviewed, put the mid-July count at 19. The gap reflects reporting lags and different counting methods, not disagreement about the trajectory. Lopez-Cornejo’s death adds another name to that toll. It comes as ICE holds record numbers of people — more than 71,000 nationwide by early 2026, according to Human Rights Watch.
Both deaths have hardened demands to shut Delaney Hall. Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she was “deeply disturbed” by the weekend death and has renewed her push to close the for-profit center. Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka said “yet another family is forced to endure the unimaginable loss” of a relative held there. Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, called the death “another devastating result of the rampant inhumane conditions” at a facility that has drawn detainee hunger strikes and complaints about food, heat, and medical care.
The toll may be higher still. Menendez said ICE officials told him a third person processed through Delaney Hall died after a medical emergency during intake and was released from custody about two weeks earlier, according to Gothamist. ICE has officially reported two deaths of people detained at the facility.
In announcing both deaths, ICE led with the men’s immigration and arrest histories, labeling them in its news releases as “illegal aliens” and “criminal illegal aliens.” CTN does not use that language. What the records establish is simpler: two men — one Salvadoran, one Haitian- entered a Newark detention center alive and left it dead within months of each other, their causes of death still officially unresolved.
https://ctninfo.com/?p=44011&preview=true
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ice-detainee-who-illegally-re-entered-us-after-deportation-dies-delaney-hall
