- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
A Salvadoran man held for the past six weeks at Delaney Hall, the largest ICE detention center in the New York metro area, has died, his mother and attorneys say. It is the second death at the facility since it opened a year and a half ago.
In a lengthy interview posted to Facebook on Monday by New Jersey-based immigrant rights groups Radio Jornalera and Radio Cosecha, Maria Cornejo, the man’s mother, described the death of her son Edwin Jeovanny Lopez Cornejo over the weekend.
Madalyne Atenco, a paralegal at the law firm representing Lopez Cornejo in a federal habeas corpus lawsuit, also confirmed his death with The City Reporter. After the initial publication of this story, ICE released its own statement confirming his death.
Lopez Cornejo was a 39-year-old who immigrated from El Salvador nearly 20 years ago and the father of a 12-year-old U.S. citizen daughter, according to legal filings. His mother Maria said in the Facebook interview that she had last heard from her son on Friday, a day before his death.
He had called from Delaney Hall saying he didn’t feel well and that part of his face and his right hand had gone numb.
A federal habeas corpus filing submitted on Lopez Cornejo’s behalf late last month described a detailed medical regimen to manage focal epilepsy, high blood pressure and high blood sugar, among other chronic conditions. The petition did not allege he was being denied regular medicines.
“He had a consultation and they were going to do some exams, but they didn’t say when,” Maria recounted in Spanish.
She next heard about her son the following day in a call from the hospital, which asked her to identify his body. Hospital officials told her that her son had arrived lifeless.
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“I’ve lost my son,” Maria said. “If there isn’t justice, they are going to continue this way forever, and we don’t know how many more people we have to lose in this country, working people.”
Lopez Cornejo’s attorney said he had no criminal history and was most recently working as a landscaper and also in a warehouse in Jackson, New Jersey, according to attestations in his support submitted by colleagues as part of the lawsuit seeking his release.
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Edwin Jeovanny Lopez Cornejo should be alive today. His death was preventable, and his family deserves answers, accountability and justice,” said Jorge Torres, organizing director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, one of the groups working with Cornejo’s family.
Lopez Cornejo’s death was the first at the facility since Delaney Hall shot into the national spotlight in late May, when detainees mounted a protest inside the facility while heavily armed ICE agents met protesters outside its gates with pepper spray and batons for days on end.
One of the prime demands was the release of medically vulnerable detainees, who strikers said were being denied access to proper medical care.
The City Reporter detailed the accounts of dozens of those detainees, who had reported severe medical neglect while being held at the facility. They included a pregnant woman suffering from severe stomach pains who was denied prenatal care, a man with leukemia who missed two months of treatments and a Haitian woman with a throat tumor that obstructed her breathing.
Multiple detainees described difficulty accessing routine medication to manage treatable medical conditions like epilepsy and diabetes. Detainees also described having to make repeated requests over days and weeks to see a doctor on staff before finally getting an appointment.
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The surging death count comes as ICE is detaining a record number of people as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. As of mid-July, there were 65,765 people in ICE detention, down slightly from a peak of 70,766 in January.


