Death at Delaney Hall

Good morning.

Yesterday we learned another man detained at migrant jail Delaney Hall died in custody, when the man’s mother came forward with his story.

Sophie Nieto-Muñoz talked to her in what what a heart-wrenching interview. Maria Cornejo said her son, Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, was picked up by federal agents in June, had a work permit, and did not deserve to be jailed.

 “I’m destroyed,” she said. “I never imagined this would happen. I don’t even have the words to string together to say how I feel. I’m so heartbroken. I’ve never felt pain this deep before. He was a good son.”

Cornejo told Sophie her son had diabetes and high blood pressure and was not getting his medication on a regular basis. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement disputes this, and said they picked up Edwin Cornejo because he had entered the U.S. illegally from El Salvador twice since 2006.

Read more from Sophie.

ICE: Via Jimmy Vielkind at Gothamist, a federal judge in New York barred that state from enforcing its law that bans ICE agents from covering their faces, with the judge saying the law improperly regulates the federal government. New Jersey has a similar law — one it does not seem to be enforcing anyway — that is being challenged in federal court by the Trump administration.

Voting: The Republican chairs of the House Administration and Judiciary committees sent Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell a letter Monday seeking documents related to the voter registration fiasco that has put a major target on New Jersey’s state government. The letter, co-signed by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-02), says the committees are “concerned about the application of federal law in New Jersey as it pertains to accurate voter registration, as well as the effect that New Jersey’s failure to identify and remove noncitizens from its voter rolls has on the civil liberties of American voters and their ability to elect their representatives.”

Courts: The New Jersey Supreme Court on Monday ruled that defendants who wish to mount insanity or diminished mental capacity defenses must present expert witnesses to back up their claims. “Jurors should not be left to speculate in the highly specialized area of mental illness in the high stakes setting of a criminal trial,” Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis wrote in one of the two cases the court decided unanimously.

The cases at hand include some alarming details. I’m highlighting the below because this incident begins with the kind of road rage I witness on New Jersey roads almost daily. The Calhoun mentioned is Sciasia Calhoun, a woman the defendant in this case shot and killed in 2018:

“At some point, Calhoun had turned her car’s high beams on because one of the headlights was out. When defendant saw Calhoun’s high beams, he became upset, pulled over, and allowed Calhoun to pass. According to Fiore, after defendant allowed Calhoun to pass, he sped up to Calhoun’s car until he almost hit the bumper of her vehicle and started flashing his high beams. As Calhoun began to take an exit off the roadway, defendant pulled out a gun, rolled down his window … lifted himself out of his seat onto the windowsill and used his left hand to fire the gun toward Calhoun. Calhoun’s car thereafter veered off to the side of the road.”

Cannabis: Verano, a major cannabis firm that operates in New Jersey, is suing the state in federal court over New Jersey’s requirement that cannabis companies sign labor peace agreements with unions. Those agreements force Verano to remain neutral on union organizing and bar it from bad-mouthing the union, among other things. The company says this requirement is preempted by federal law. “Verano did not want any of these terms,” the complaint states. “Had it been free to do so, it would not have accepted any of them. In fact, it would have signed no (labor peace agreement) at all.”

Health: New Jersey joined 23 other states and D.C. in suing the Trump administration Monday over its demand for states to provide Social Security numbers, immigration status, and other private information on low-income residents who receive cash benefits via TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport said in a statement that the regulatory change would “obliterate” existing guardrails on sensitive data and “violate the privacy of families that are just trying to make ends meet.” “The Trump Administration has tried time and again to weaponize every aspect of government as part of their reckless immigration enforcement efforts. Now, they want to misuse a program intended to help vulnerable families and children as a tool for harassing immigrants,” Davenport said.

D.C.: States do not have time before November’s midterm elections to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating overhauls of their mail-in-voting systems, two dozen Democratic state officials told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The states want a federal pause on the order to remain in place. “Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting—especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas—would likely be denied mail ballots and, as a result, disenfranchised,” the state officials said. “Many more voters would be confused—either because they wouldn’t receive their mail ballots or would fear that USPS would fail to deliver their voted ballots to state officials for tabulation.”