Democrats repeat calls to shut down Delaney Hall

Democratic lawmakers met in a Morristown church Tuesday to repeat calls to shut down Newark immigration jail Delaney Hall and raise alarms about medical care for detainees held there.

Their appearance came 10 days after the death of Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, a Salvadoran man who was held at Delaney Hall for six weeks and whose family said was denied diabetes and blood pressure medication. Families of others who died at Delaney Hall also spoke with Rep. Analilia Mejia, Rep. Rob Menendez, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with local leaders from Morris County.

“Three deaths at Delaney Hall — completely and totally unacceptable. Fifty-five deaths in ICE custody since the beginning of Donald Trump’s time in office, over the last 17 months or so,” said Jeffries. “That means one death in ICE custody every six days. That is not America.”

Lopez Cornejo was the second Delaney Hall detainee to die in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since the facility opened in May 2025. Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian man, died within a day of arriving at the facility in December. Menendez said last week there was a third death of a person who was having a medical episode while being processed at Delaney Hall but was released from custody before they died at a local hospital.

The three lawmakers said they also heard from former detainees who said they suffered medical neglect while held at Delaney Hall and the state’s other migrant jail, the Elizabeth Detention Center.

A woman named Margarita who said she was detained for two months at the Elizabeth facility following a raid in Dover described being pepper-sprayed and watching immigration agents pin her husband to the ground, despite her son shouting in English that he recently had spinal surgery. It was an experience that left her “traumatized,” she said.

Inside the facility, she said, detainees were served spoiled food. A pregnant detainee missed her prenatal appointments, and another detainee waited five days to see a doctor for a toothache, she said.

Mejia said that when she visited Margarita in detention, she found that Margarita was being given a quarter of her diabetes medication. Her medication was only restored after pressure from members of Congress who conducted oversight visits, Mejia said.

“I want you to think about what our government is doing to human beings, that we would treat each other with such callousness, that we would allow a human being to suffer, knowing that they are deteriorating in a preventable way. Her doctor was not contacted, her pharmacy was not contacted, and her family was ignored,” she said.

Menendez, who has made repeated oversight visits to Delaney Hall, said Geo Group, the private company that runs the facility under a 15-year contract with the federal government worth over $1 billion, staffs the site with only one physician who is not present around the clock.

He said no physician was at the jail on the day Lopez Cornejo died. If someone has a medical emergency when the physician is not there, the people attending to that individual are either nurses or physician assistants, he added.

“These are the types of things that we have raised over and over again,” Menendez said, “and you are seeing the dire consequences of them not being able to adequately provide healthcare to the individuals that they are bringing through Delaney Hall and Elizabeth Detention Center.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has disputed that medical care inside Delaney Hall is lax.

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” a recent, unsigned statement from the department reads. “It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody. This includes medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”