The recent death of a Salvadoran father detained at a migrant facility in Newark, New Jersey, has sparked fresh calls to shut down the facility — and to terminate the federal contracts of a multibillion-dollar private jailer facing accusations of medical neglect at lockups across the country.
The company GEO Group has a 15-year, $1 billion contract to operate Delaney Hall, where Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo was held before he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital on Aug. 1. Lopez Cornejo, whom ICE identified as 41 years old, was at least the second person to die while in custody at the privately run jail.
Rep. Rob Menendez said he was informed of another death of a detainee released to a hospital after experiencing a seizure inside Delaney Hall in July.
State Attorney General Jennifer Davenport on Friday issued subpoenas to find out whether GEO Group violated detainees’ civil rights at Delaney Hall.
Detainees, their advocates and local elected officials have repeatedly denounced what they describe as serious healthcare failures at the facility. A Gothamist investigation identified more than 70 lawsuits filed by Delaney Hall detainees who say they faced medical neglect between May 2025 and June of this year.
The pattern of complaints over healthcare problems extends to the dozens of other facilities GEO Group operates nationwide. The company has contract obligations worth $1.1 billion from the federal government in just the 2026 fiscal year, which ends in September, according to federal contract data.
Another large for-profit jailer, CoreCivic, has contracts totaling more than $530 million this year, according to federal data.
Congressional Democrats say if their party gains control of the House or Senate in this fall’s midterm elections, they intend to investigate and hold the Trump administration and contractors like GEO Group accountable.
"The inhumane and unacceptable conditions at Delaney Hall and other GEO Group sites shock the conscience,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, in a written statement. “The American people deserve transparency, accountability and independent investigations into the role Donald Trump has played in enabling deadly detention conditions and his administration’s violent mass deportation machine.”
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, a fellow Democrat, has called on the federal government to “strip GEO Group of its billion-dollar contract and shutter Delaney Hall.”
GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira said the company “ strongly refutes these allegations” of inadequate medical care at its detention centers. He did not respond to questions about elected officials’ calls to terminate its contracts or Menendez’s account of a third death of a Delaney Hall detainee.
In an unsigned written statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said all detainees are provided with comprehensive medical care, including dental, mental health services and 24-hour emergency care. ICE has previously stated that Lopez Cornejo received proper medical treatment and prescribed medication while in custody.
But lawmakers have cast doubt on those assertions.
Democratic House minority leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
In an interview with Gothamist last Thursday, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, called Delaney Hall a “death trap” and said that if Democrats regain power in the Senate, they will hold public oversight hearings “that force ICE leadership and private contractors to answer directly to Congress.”
He also said the party would work to pass legislation reinstating the Department of Homeland Security’s internal oversight office, known as Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman. DHS told NPR it shut down the office after a funding lapse in May.
“Right now they're operating in the shadows without accountability,” Booker said.
Last week, Pallone, Rep. Analilia Mejia, Rep. LaMonica McIver and six other Democratic congressmembers from New Jersey sent a letter to the heads of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement demanding all records, inspections and corrective action plans “concerning medical care at Delaney Hall since GEO Group assumed operations.”
“The question is no longer whether ICE knows what is happening inside Delaney Hall. It is, ‘why does ICE continue to allow the GEO Group to put lives at risk?’” the group of representatives wrote.
In an interview, Mejia said she is drafting new legislation to strengthen the standards for basic care and treatment in the facilities.
“ We need to make sure that ICE is ensuring that, within these facilities, they are in fact providing mental health services, suicide prevention, adequate medical and psychiatric staff,” Mejia said. “ Unfortunately, much of what we are seeing is a lot of ‘should do’, not ‘must do.’”
‘New growth opportunities’
GEO Group has played a prominent role in President Donald Trump’s efforts to detain and deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants from the United States.
The company currently operates at least 24 detention centers on behalf of ICE across the country, according to a review of facilities and clients listed on the company’s website. It also contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and state corrections departments at about two dozen other sites.
The Trump administration named former GEO Group executive David Venturella acting ICE director in May.
In an earnings report for the second quarter of this year, GEO Group reported more than $730 million in revenue – a 15% increase from the same period in 2025. Company CEO George C. Zoley attributed the gains to “new growth opportunities” over the past year in a written statement accompanying the earnings report.
Nationally, more than 65,700 people were detained in ICE or Customs and Border Patrol custody as of July 11, according to agency statistics. Just over 39,100 people were held in immigrant detention in January 2025, just before Trump took office. The Trump administration has pushed to rapidly expand the number of detention facilities nationwide as it ramps up arrests and deportations.
GEO Group’s stock price has roughly tripled from around $12 a share in August 2024, before Trump won re-election, to over $30 a share Thursday, according to MarketWatch.
But the contractor has long faced accusations of mishandling medical crises and exposing detainees to dangerous conditions at its lockups nationwide, including at a privately run prison in Queens, New York, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Dire circumstances’
Concerns over detainee safety at GEO Group facilities dot the country.
In Aurora, Colorado, state and federal authorities are locked in a legal battle over whether state health inspectors can investigate a case of tuberculosis inside a crowded migrant jail operated by GEO Group in order to prevent further infection. The company and the Trump administration have so far denied access, arguing they are not bound by state regulations.
Ferreira, the GEO Group spokesperson, said the company follows federal guidelines and tests “for communicable diseases, and any suspected case is promptly placed in medical isolation in a negative pressure room for diagnostic testing.“
State regulators and health inspectors in New Jersey have also been unable to gain full access to Delaney Hall. A state lawsuit seeking that access is ongoing.
In central Pennsylvania, immigration advocates rallied in June for the release of a 40-year-old green card applicant from Egypt who was detained at the 1,876-bed Moshannon Valley Processing Center, which is also operated by GEO Group. Advocates said he had been suffering from serious kidney disease and denied proper medical treatment.
Detainees went on hunger strike at the facility in April to protest a lack of healthcare and spoiled food at the site.
“We’re definitely seeing a crisis with respect to medical care at GEO facilities across the country,” said Carmen Iguina Gonzalez, the deputy director for immigration detention at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s really dire circumstances that people are being held in.”
GEO Group's ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California.
A federal judge last month ordered the Department of Homeland Security to ensure detainees at the GEO-run detention center in Adelanto, California, have access to potable water, nutritious meals and access to prescribed medication and healthcare.
At least four people have died while in custody at the Adelanto facility, located roughly 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, according to news site LAist.
Attorneys for detainees who sued over conditions in the jail say the government and GEO Group are not following through on the judge’s requirements. But DHS has refuted those claims in court.
Accounts of medical neglect and untimely deaths are not isolated to detention facilities run by private, for-profit contractors. Dozens of detainees have died at Rikers Island jails, and top city officials have faced scrutiny over accusations of mismanagement, violence and substandard medical treatment.
But immigrant rights’ advocates say the problems at privately-run facilities are mounting.
“It’s the rapid expansion of a system that already has a history of gaps in the delivery of medical care,” said Iguina Gonzalez. “Couple that rapid expansion with the simultaneous removal of most oversight mechanisms” and the Trump administration is “creating a perfect storm for a system in crisis.”
Private jail in Queens
GEO Group’s practices have also faced scrutiny inside the five boroughs.
New York Attorney General Letitia James investigated the company's handling of a serious COVID outbreak at a private jail it operated near JFK Airport early in the 2020 pandemic.
Multiple inmates, family members and defense attorneys described how sick detainees were housed in barracks-style dormitories after solitary confinement units used for quarantining the sick filled up, a lack of personal protective equipment and severe staff shortages.
Conditions at the facility were first revealed by the Queens Daily Eagle, a local newspaper.
GEO Group operated the 222-bed facility on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service, which used the converted warehouse to lock up detainees who cooperated with prosecutors in other cases. The building was not used for immigration detention at the time of the pandemic.
James sued the company after she said it ignored her subpoenas seeking information about its management of the facility during COVID.
In its response to her requests, GEO Group said the company was immune from state regulation because it contracted with the federal government. The company defended the precautions it took to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the time.
GEO Group stopped operating the facility in March 2021, shortly after then-President Joe Biden signed an executive order ceasing the renewal of private prison contracts.
Trump rescinded the order on his first day in office in January 2025.
