00:00Edwin Lopez Cornejo died. He is dead. And it's a death that did not have to be.
00:09He was detained by ICE on June 18th. He was sent to Delaney Hall in my home city in Newark,
00:18New Jersey, a detention center. And he never came out alive. 20 years, 20 years Edwin lived
00:28in the United States of America. 20 years of building a life here. 20 years of being connected
00:35to people and community. 20 years of making here in America a way forward. And yet in
00:47less than two months of detention, the immigration system in our country led to his death.
00:57And in Delaney Hall, he's the third person in nine months to die. The 23rd person to die in ICE
01:04custody this year. Not the first warning sign, not the second. This is the third death at the same
01:12facility and yet nothing changes. Let me tell you exactly how Edwin Lopez Cornejo died. Because his
01:23family deserves to have his name set on the Senate floor and his story told plainly. Edwin
01:30had diabetes. He had high blood pressure. He needed his medication to survive. And Delaney
01:38Hall denied it to him. The day before he died, he told his mother that his arm had gone numb.
01:45Half his face had gone numb. And understand, this is not a minor complaint. This was a man that was
01:57having a medical emergency telling someone exactly what happened to his body. Did anyone come to his aid?
02:05No. Did he get his medication? No. Less than 24 hours, he was dead.
02:16Doctors have warned us. Attorneys have warned us in New Jersey. Families have warned us. A chorus of
02:24people in our communities, not politicians, not political activists, doctors, lawyers have been
02:31warning us that detainees who walked out of that building, with their testimony and the facts and
02:41the evidence, people have said over and over again that this facility is dangerous. It is not well run
02:48and within it is a pattern of disregard for human decency. DHS has known that Delaney Hall is nothing short
02:59of a travesty since they reopened it over a year ago. So who runs what is for so many a
03:08house of horrors?
03:09Who runs the institution that I saw with myself when I went there and met people? This is not for
03:15serious criminals. This is not a place for folks who've done serious crimes in our country. This is a
03:22detention facility for people. Many of them have been in our country for decades. Many of them have
03:27American spouses, American children. And when I, when I went there, I saw mothers who were recently
03:33postpartum who were not getting the support. I saw a woman who lost her child while in that
03:39detention facility, had a miscarriage there, did not get the support that she needed. Story after story,
03:46people told me of what is going on there, the horrors that are going on there, and who runs it?
03:55The United States government does not run that center. It is a private group called the GEO Group,
04:02a private for-profit prison that has high-level Republican officials among its former employees.
04:12companies. This group won a billion-dollar contract. No competition, no bidding, lots of campaign
04:22contributions, a phone call, a signature, and they have a billion dollars of taxpayer money.
04:31New Jersey had to sue this company just to get health inspectors through the front door of a facility
04:39operating on American soil, funded by American taxpayers, and our state couldn't even do basic
04:45health inspections. They did not get, they did not get the permits to open that place.
04:55They did not have inspections before they did so. This is a private company taking a billion dollars of
05:03American taxpayer money. The less they provide sanitary services, the less they provide doctors
05:10and medical professionals, the more profit they make off of taxpayers. At whose expense? At the decency
05:18of American people and at the expense of the lives of the people who are there.
05:26We give them hundreds of millions of dollars. And what are the reports out of Delaney Hall? Spoiled food.
05:35Contaminated water. Staff who retaliate against people brave enough to speak up about the conditions.
05:43A billion dollars in inadequate accountability. A billion dollars in inadequate health care.
05:50A billion dollars in a man whose face is numb, whose arm is numb, who's asking for help, does not
05:57get treatment,
05:58does not get health care. So here's the truth.
06:06It's clear for the GEO group that part of their business model is this cruelty. Cut medical staff,
06:15skimp on food, let the air conditioning go out during the hottest days in New Jersey, let the roof leak,
06:24cram more bodies into less space. Every corner cut is a dollar of their profit. Every dollar of their
06:32profit is a dollar that the GEO group's executives get to celebrate on their next earning calls.
06:39GEO group stock has more than doubled since February of 2026. More than doubled. You know why?
06:47Well, follow the money. Three million dollars from the GEO group and its executives went into Donald Trump's
06:53campaign, into his PAC, into his inauguration. It's a pay to play that's worse than that. A pay to play
07:07and people get hurt. Lives are lost. Over two billion dollars in federal contracts
07:15to run facilities like Delaney Hall in our country. This is not immigration policy.
07:22This is not what we stand for. No one loses their humanity because they're incarcerated.
07:31No one should lose their basic rights because they're behind bars.
07:38Look, I'm all for what this administration promised it would do. They said they would go after the worst of
07:45the worst. They said they would go after the people threatening our communities, menacing our families.
07:50We should all be supportive of that. I believe we should have strong borders. I believe we should
07:57get criminals off of our streets. But the people actually locked up in that building,
08:05in Delaney Hall. We know that more than 70 percent of the people have never been convicted of a single
08:13crime.
08:14I met a high school student who had more of a Jersey accent than I do, who just wanted to
08:20walk with his
08:20class rounded up. I've had the Catholic Church reach out to me because of the sweeps they're doing
08:27around schools and churches. I've had family members beg me to get folks out
08:34in order to see their American children hit milestones like birthdays and graduations.
08:42I've been appealed to from everyone from priests to Republicans in our community.
08:47Many are following our laws, but we in the United States Senate Congress, we hold the purse strings
08:55that the administration depends on. We should be a check and a balance. We should demand that our
08:59taxpayer dollars are being used. And when we see a body count climbing that is not normal,
09:06when we see more and more deaths, when we see a mother's son whose face went numb the night before,
09:16we should be asking for action and accountability. Edwin Lopez Cornejo's death was not a tragedy.
09:25A tragedy is somewhat something that no one could have prevented. This is a choice. Every single
09:31day DHS keeps Delaney Hall open is another choice to let this happen again. Three times already,
09:38we should not make this choice. I'm now asking for a unanimous consent to pass the Delaney Hall
09:46Closure Act, which will close Delaney Hall within 90 days. They're out of excuses. We are out of time.
09:53How many more people should die? So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding Rule 22,
10:00I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of my bill at the desk,
10:07that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider
10:12be considered made and laid upon the table.
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