MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
New Jersey officials have confirmed that an immigrant in ICE custody at Delaney Hall has died. The facility, operated by private prison contractor GEO Group, has been the site of intense protest over poor living conditions. NPR immigration correspondent Vanessa Romo joins us. Hey, Vanessa.
VANESSA ROMO, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Tell us what we know about the man who died at Delaney Hall immigration detention center.
ROMO: His name was Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo. He was 41 years old, from El Salvador, and he died on Saturday. His mother, who spoke with an immigrant advocacy group, says that he had been in the country just shy of 20 years, so nearly half of his life. He has a 12-year-old daughter, who his mother says is now an orphan. And he was in custody for less than six weeks. Lopez suffered from several ailments. He had high blood pressure. He was diabetic and had epilepsy. He took medication, but his family fears that he was not getting it or at least not in a timely way while he was in custody. And according to his mom, no one from his family got to see him, but she did speak with him this last Friday, the day before he died.
MARIA: (Non-English language spoken).
ROMO: That's Lopez's mother, Maria. She says that when they spoke, he said that he didn't feel well, that part of his face and his right hand were both numb. He'd lost feeling. He told her that he'd gotten some medical attention and that he'd be undergoing further exams but that he wasn't told exactly when.
KELLY: What are Homeland Security officials saying about this?
ROMO: DHS issued a death in detention statement saying that Lopez experienced a medical emergency while he was in custody at the GEO facility and that, quote, "staff and medical staff responded immediately." They called 911, and he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. For now, the official cause of death is pending.
KELLY: Yeah, I'd mentioned Delaney has seen a bunch of protests. We have seen hunger strikes by detainees there. What else do we need to know about this facility?
ROMO: It has definitely become a flashpoint for a lot of issues that are plaguing immigration detention across the country. But there, local leaders, including Newark's mayor, state and federal lawmakers, are all incredibly frustrated by what they say is a lack of access and transparency there. Here's New Jersey Congresswoman Analilia Mejia, who I spoke with earlier today.
ANALILIA MEJIA: We need to make sure that our state officials, health officials have full and unencumbered access to detention centers. We have to make sure that DHS is, in fact, tracking and taking into account people's chronic health conditions, not changing people's medications willy-nilly.
ROMO: Mejia also said that she wants to make sure that DHS reverses course on their reporting rule.
KELLY: Their reporting rule - just quickly, what reporting rule is she talking about?
ROMO: It's the way that ICE is now reporting detainee deaths. So up until June, if a detainee died within 30 days after being released, it was still logged as an ICE detention death. But that's no longer the case. The Trump administration defended the change, calling it a common sense measure and saying it's not responsible for individuals weeks after release. So what that means is that...
KELLY: Right.
ROMO: ...By ICE's count, there have been 23 deaths in custody, but other people say it's actually much higher.
KELLY: OK. NPR's Vanessa Romo. Thanks.
ROMO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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