An ICE detainee from New Jersey dies a day after calling his mother from the detention center to say he was unwell

A New Jersey immigrant who had been detained at an ICE facility at Delaney Hall was declared dead last Saturday after a medical emergency.

According to CNN, Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, 41, had called his mother to tell her he was sick the day before he died.

That conversation on Friday was the last time Maria Cornejo spoke to her son. She said he told her he wasn’t feeling well, describing numbness that had spread through one side of his face and into his right hand. He also mentioned a medical consultation earlier that day and told her staff planned to run more tests, though he wasn’t sure when they would happen.

Accounts of Lopez Cornejo’s final hours have come mostly from members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, who were briefed by the agency. 

Rep. Rob Menendez said ICE officials told him the detainee reported feeling dizzy and worn down in the cafeteria on Saturday afternoon before making his way to the medical unit and collapsing there.

Staff started CPR, per Gothamist, and it was roughly 37 minutes after the 911 call before emergency responders reached him. He arrived at University Hospital around 2:40 p.m. and was pronounced dead at 3:24 p.m.

Sen. Andy Kim said Lopez Cornejo died of an apparent heart attack. ICE has said the cause of death is still to be determined and awaits a medical examination.

Who was Lopez Cornejo and what are his family’s allegations against ICE?

Lopez Cornejo, a father to a 12-year-old daughter, had lived in Plainfield for about two decades before he was arrested on June 18 and detained pending removal. His mother said agents took him as he was leaving the house to head to work.

His family says he was denied medication he needed. Maria Cornejo said her son used blood pressure and diabetes medications that she believes he went without during the more than six weeks he was held. 

“That is one of the reasons that I believe caused the death of my son, the negligence — that he wasn’t given his medication that he had to take,” she said, in a chat with immigration advocacy group Movimiento Cosecha. At a news conference on Tuesday, August 4, Cornejo’s brother Danilo called for an investigation into the circumstances of Lopez’s death by another agency, per The Philadelphia Inquirer.

ICE disputes the account, claiming that he was given appropriate medical treatment and his prescriptions throughout his detention. 

Delaney Hall was already facing controversy

Delaney Hall is a 1,000-bed center run by the private GEO Group under a 15-year, $1 billion contract with ICE. It has drawn sustained criticism since it reopened in May 2025, and Lopez Cornejo’s death was not the first there. He is the second person held there to die since it reopened in May 2025. Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian immigrant, lost his life in December a day after he arrived.

ICE’s own detainee-death reporting lists 22 deaths in custody so far this year, following 33 in 2025, more deaths than in any year in over two decades, according to the National Immigration Project. Lopez Cornejo is at least the 54th person to die in ICE custody since January 2025.

ICE narrowed its reporting policy by cutting a provision on June 2, leaving out detainees who are released to a hospital and die there. Menendez has claimed the process hid the death of another man weeks ago. “You didn’t hear about this because they released him to University Hospital,” he said. (via UPI) 

That’s why the official count and independent numbers can differ, and ICE’s own reporting may not be a reliable indicator of how many have died in the agency’s charge.