The Object From the Beginning Was to Terrorize — Even to the Point of Death
The death of Edwin Lopez-Cornejo in a New Jersey immigration jail might have been reported as another terrible incident inside one detention center.
It should not be.
Lopez-Cornejo was 39 years old. He was from El Salvador. He suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure and epilepsy. His family says that while he was detained at Delaney Hall in Newark, he had trouble getting medication and adequate medical treatment. Shortly before his death, he told his mother that he had lost feeling in part of his face and arm.
ICE says he received appropriate medical care and that staff responded when he suffered a medical emergency.
Now New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport has opened a civil-rights investigation into Delaney Hall and the GEO Group, the private corporation operating the facility. The investigation will examine whether detainees’ rights were violated. (Reuters)
But Lopez-Cornejo was not the first.
He was at least the 56th person to die in ICE custody during Donald Trump’s second term, according to an Associated Press count. (AP News)
That number changes the story.
This Is Not One Jail
Reuters examined deaths throughout the immigration detention system and found that the death rate under Trump had more than doubled compared with the years from 2009 through 2024.
During those earlier years, there was roughly one death for every 3,848 people detained. Under Trump, Reuters calculated approximately one death for every 1,630 detainees.
The causes vary. Some people committed suicide. Some died from heart problems or other illnesses. In a number of cases, families, advocates or medical experts raised questions about delayed treatment, inadequate mental-health care or responses to medical emergencies.
At the same time, the number of people being locked up has soared. Reuters reported that the detained population reached about 70,000 as the administration expanded its deportation campaign. (Reuters)
Fifty-six deaths do not prove that anyone wanted 56 people to die.
They do establish that death is no longer some rare, unimaginable possibility inside this system.
It is happening again and again.
Fear Was Part of the Policy
The Trump administration has never hidden its desire to frighten undocumented immigrants into leaving the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security spent millions of dollars on advertising telling undocumented immigrants to leave or face arrest, fines, imprisonment and deportation. One government campaign warned people that immigration officers would find them. Another told prospective migrants that those who came illegally could be hunted down and deported. (Department of Homeland Security)
DHS promoted self-deportation as a success. The message was simple: leave voluntarily before the government comes for you.
That is deterrence.
But deterrence works only if people believe the threatened consequences are worse than leaving their homes, jobs, families and communities.
Fear therefore was not merely an accidental byproduct of the policy. Fear was one of the mechanisms by which the policy was supposed to work.
Then the detention system grew.
And people began dying in it.
There Is Money in the Cells
Delaney Hall is not simply a government building.
It is owned and operated by the GEO Group, one of America’s largest private prison companies.
In February 2025, GEO announced that ICE had awarded it a 15-year contract for the 1,000-bed facility. GEO estimated the contract would be worth approximately $1 billion, producing more than $60 million a year in revenue during its first full year of operation.
The company’s responsibilities include security, food and maintenance—and access to medical care. (The GEO Group)
That is an important part of this story.
Every additional detention bed represents a human being deprived of freedom.
It also represents revenue.
The administration needs beds to carry out mass detention. Private prison companies have beds to sell. The more people detained, the larger the market becomes.
GEO itself described the expansion of federal immigration enforcement as an unprecedented business opportunity when it announced the Delaney Hall contract. (The GEO Group)
Then a man died there.
New Jersey Had Already Been Asking Questions
The complaints about Delaney Hall did not begin with Lopez-Cornejo’s death.
Detainees and advocates had already complained about spoiled food, unsanitary bathrooms, inadequate medical treatment and ventilation problems. New Jersey officials had also complained about difficulties inspecting the facility. (Reuters)
Now the state is investigating whether civil rights were violated.
The question cannot end at the doors of Delaney Hall.
If this were one death at one badly operated facility, the solution might be to investigate the facility, punish wrongdoing and improve its medical system.
But there have been dozens of deaths across the detention system.
The death rate has more than doubled.
The detention population has exploded.
Private corporations are receiving contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to provide the beds required for the expansion.
And throughout it all, the federal government has openly advertised harsh consequences as a means of convincing people to leave the country.
Those facts belong in the same story.
Even to the Point of Death
There is a line between deterrence and cruelty.
There is another between cruelty and indifference to human life.
When people repeatedly die inside a system after complaints about medical treatment, sanitation and conditions have already been raised, government cannot simply count each death, investigate it separately and move to the next one.
At some point the question becomes whether the system itself is producing the result.
The Trump administration wanted immigrants to be afraid.
It said so.
It wanted people inside the United States to believe that remaining here could result in arrest, detention and deportation. It wanted people outside the country to believe that coming here would bring severe consequences.
What has followed is the enormous expansion of a detention system in which at least 56 people have died during Trump’s second term.
There is no evidence that Trump, ICE or GEO Group deliberately set out to kill detainees, and nothing presented here establishes an intent to cause anyone’s death.
That distinction matters.
But it does not end the inquiry.
The question is whether a government can deliberately construct a system around fear, punishment and mass confinement, watch the death toll rise, and continue expanding that system without accepting responsibility for the foreseeable consequences.
Death may not have been the objective.
But when terror is the tool, how many deaths can occur before death becomes part of the price the government has decided it is willing to pay?
