Members of Congress press ICE over detainee deaths, alleged neglect

New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone and 87 other Democrats sent a letter to federal officials Tuesday.

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone and 87 other House Democrats are demanding answers from federal immigration authorities about more than 50 deaths in ICE custody and allegations of widespread medical neglect at detention facilities.

In an Aug. 25 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director David Venturella, Pallone and his colleagues expressed “profound outrage” over the death of Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo earlier this month after he was detained at Delaney Hall in Newark.

All eight Democratic members of New Jersey’s House delegation signed the letter.

The lawmakers described Lopez Cornejo’s death as part of a “broader and deeply troubling pattern of deaths” at ICE detention facilities nationwide.

“More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since January 20, 2025, with additional deaths occurring shortly after individuals were released from ICE custody,” the lawmakers wrote. “These deaths raise serious questions about the conditions in which individuals are being detained, the quality and timeliness of the medical care they receive, and whether ICE and its private detention center contractors are meeting their responsibilities to safeguard the health and well-being of people in their custody.”

The lawmakers also pointed to more than 300 allegations of medical neglect in federal court filings involving detainees across at least 33 states.

Those allegations include delayed or denied medical treatment, failure to provide necessary medications, inadequate treatment of chronic illnesses, insufficient mental health services, and “dangerous delays in emergency care,” according to the letter.

“Detention should never be a death sentence,” the lawmakers wrote.

Detainees have reported going without medicine for high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, HIV, and other serious conditions. Some requests for medical attention have gone unanswered for weeks as detainees’ conditions deteriorated, according to the letter.

Lopez Cornejo, a 41-year-old father of one from El Salvador, is one of at least three deaths tied to Delaney Hall. He died on Aug. 1 after having a medical emergency. Jose Chajon-Raxon, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, died in late July. Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian immigrant, died Dec. 12 of 2025.

Detainees at the Newark detention center have complained for more than a year about foul water, inedible food, poor medical care, and the inconsistent distribution of their prescriptions, among other things.

Lopez-Cornejo’s family has blamed GEO Group, the private prison firm that runs the site as part of a 15-year, $1 billion contract, for not giving him the medicine he needed to survive chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and seizures.

Both GEO Group and ICE have repeatedly denied any negligence or wrongdoing.

But lawmakers said the problems extend well beyond Delaney Hall and raised particular concerns about facilities operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two main private ICE detention facility contractors.

The letter cited problems at several facilities across the country, including Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, where two detainees died in less than two months; Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in New York, where staffing shortages have resulted in waits of as long as five months for dental care; and Imperial Regional Detention Facility in California, where two detainees died over the past year.

Lawmakers also pointed to allegations and findings involving GEO Group’s Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California and CoreCivic facilities in California, Arizona, and Texas, including reported delays in treatment and medication, inadequate staffing, difficulty accessing specialists, and infectious disease outbreaks.

“These deaths cannot be viewed in isolation from the documented failures in medical care occurring throughout ICE’s detention system,” the lawmakers wrote. “Delayed treatment, interruptions in prescription medications, inadequate medical and mental health staffing, failures to respond appropriately to serious medical conditions, and gaps in emergency and follow-up care have devastating and fatal consequences.”

A GEO Group representative referred press inquiries to ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

In an email to The Vindicator, an unidentified DHS spokesperson disputed the allegations and said that as of May 29, “death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.008% of the detained population.”

“As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens — including providing access to proper medical care,” the statement said. “For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

Still, lawmakers said ICE and DHS have an obligation to determine whether medical care failures contributed to deaths in federal custody or shortly after release, report their findings to Congress, and hold officials and contractors responsible.

ICE’s decision to stop requiring public reporting and congressional notification of deaths occurring within 30 days of a detainee’s release has made it more difficult to determine whether inadequate medical care in custody contributed to those deaths, the lawmakers said.

“The federal government cannot outsource its responsibility to provide adequate medical care, nor can ICE continue paying private companies to detain people without holding those companies accountable when serious deficiencies in care put lives at risk,” they wrote.

The lawmakers are demanding 13 types of information from ICE and DHS. They want:

• Access to care: They want to know how long detainees wait for medical screenings, health assessments, prescribed medications, and responses to routine and urgent medical requests, including treatment delays at individual facilities.
• Specialty care: Facility-level data on requests for specialists, diagnostic testing, and follow-up appointments, including approvals, denials, wait times, and backlogs.
• Prescription medications: ICE’s procedures for ensuring detainees continue receiving prescribed medications, including insulin, HIV, seizure, psychiatric, anticoagulant, and transplant medications, as well as data on interruptions and backlogs.
• Medical emergencies: Data on hospitalizations, emergency room visits, suicide attempts, overdoses, cardiac events, seizures, and other life-threatening incidents, including any delays in treatment, transportation, or hospitalization.
• Deaths in custody: The facility, date, and known cause of each death since Jan. 20, 2025, whether medical concerns were documented, and autopsy results or an explanation if no autopsy was performed.
• Releases and transfers: Information about detainees released or transferred after serious medical emergencies or while hospitalized, including their condition at the time and whether they subsequently died.
• Mental health: ICE’s mental health screening, suicide-watch, and suicide-prevention procedures, as well as the number of detainees identified as being at risk of suicide.
• Medical staffing: Staffing levels and vacancies for doctors, nurses, mental health professionals, dentists, pharmacists, and other medical workers, including whether licensed professionals are available around the clock.
• Private contractors: The companies providing medical, mental health, and pharmaceutical services at each facility, how ICE monitors them, and whether violations have resulted in penalties, corrective actions, contract changes, or termination.
• Inspections: How ICE enforces detention standards, including the number of medical-care deficiencies found, how many remain unresolved, and what corrective actions have been required.
• Complaints and retaliation: How detainees and their attorneys can report inadequate medical care or other violations, and what protections exist against retaliation.
• Systemwide changes: What ICE has done, or plans to do, to address problems involving medical care, medications, staffing, emergencies, and deaths.
• Detention contracts: Which contracts executed, amended, or renewed since Jan. 20, 2025, contain provisions asserting that state or local laws, licensing requirements, inspections, or enforcement actions do not apply, and why ICE is seeking those provisions.

The lawmakers gave Mullin and Venturella until Sept. 1 to respond.

“If they cannot be operated in compliance with federal law and the Constitution, GEO Group, CoreCivic, and any other private contractors should not continue to profit from taxpayer dollars, and the detention centers must be closed,” the lawmakers wrote.