Let me walk you through this real slow, because I want to make sure I understand it right. A man named Jose Chajon-Raxon gets booked into a privately run ICE lockup in New Jersey on July 18. He starts having seizures. Recurring seizures. And ICE holds onto him for four days while this is happening. Four days. Then they release him, he goes to the hospital, and he dies shortly after he arrives.
Now here’s where I have some questions for the manager. If a man is seizing in your custody for four days, and you release him right before he dies, did you not kill him? Or did you just find a really creative way to make sure the paperwork doesn’t say you did?
Because that’s exactly what happened. ICE ended a policy in June that required them to report the death of anyone who died within 30 days of being detained. So now the rule is: if you release them before they die, it’s not your problem. The Department of Homeland Security calls this “common sense.” I call it something else entirely.
Edwin Lopez-Cornejo got the same treatment. Denied his prescription medication for over a month. A month. Then he has a medical emergency, gets rushed out the door, and dies. Neither family was even told their relative had been transferred until after they were already dead. ICE refused to confirm what happened for days. Only after activists, lawmakers, and the families pushed and pushed and pushed did they even acknowledge it.
Thirty-three people died in ICE custody in 2025. That’s more than during the entire Biden administration. Twenty-six so far this year. And those are just the ones we know about. Thanks to this new reporting rule, the only reason the public found out about these two deaths at Delaney Hall is that people showed up and demanded answers. Without that pressure, these two men would have simply vanished from the record.
Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey, has been trying to conduct oversight at Delaney Hall for months. She finally got in and found out the private prison company running the place, GEO Group, doesn’t even keep a physician on staff 24/7. An RN maybe. Some assistants. But no doctor. She asked how intake works, how people get their medicine, what the routine is. “Never consistent, never transparent,” she said.
Wolrider YURTSEVEN / PexelsAnd what did the Trump administration do about a member of Congress trying to do her job? They arrested her. In May 2025, McIver was charged with assaulting officers outside the facility. They’ve since changed the rules for when a member of Congress can inspect a facility, how long they can stay, who they can talk to, and how much notice they have to give. Every time she goes back, there’s a new restriction.
“Cruelty is the point of everything that they do,” McIver said. I don’t think she’s wrong.
Look, you don’t have to be a lawyer to see what’s happening here. You just need eyes. A man starts seizing in your custody. You hold him for four days. You let him go right before he dies. You don’t tell his family. You don’t file a report. And when someone asks, you say “common sense” and point to a policy you wrote three weeks earlier.
That’s not an accident. That’s a system. A system designed to make people disappear from the paperwork while they’re still breathing. And the people who built it are betting you’re too distracted to notice.
So I’ll ask again, real plain: if you release a dying man so his death isn’t yours to report, what exactly is that? Because where I come from, that’s not a loophole. That’s a confession.