Thread: 129 inmates still on the run after escape from Mexican border prison

129 inmates still on the run after escape from Mexican border prison

Published September 18, 2012
Associated Press


PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico – Officials have found three inmates thought to have escaped through a tunnel at a northern Mexico border prison on Monday. The number of still-escaped prisoners now stands at 129.

The public safety secretary of the northern border state of Coahuila says three female inmates were found hiding in a prison visiting area.
Authorities in Coahuila state said the 132 inmates fled the prison in Piedras Negras, a city across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, through a tunnel that was 21 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, then cut their way through a chain link barrier and escaped onto a neighboring property.

Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos Gloria said the director and two other employees of the state prison have been detained for an investigation into the escape and are being questioned about possible involvement by authorities at the penitentiary. The prison houses about 730 inmates and the escape represented almost a fifth of its population.

The tunnel "was not made today. It had been there for months," Ramos told the Milenio TV station. "The prison was not overcrowded, none of our prisons are. We have 132 inmates escaping through a tunnel, and it doesn't make sense."

Authorities say they also found ropes and electric cables they believe were used in the break.

Federal police units and Mexican troops were deployed to search for the inmates and authorities in Coahuila state offered rewards of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrests of each prisoner.

Ramos said 70 members of an elite military special forces unit had been sent to search for the prison along with federal police.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was aware of the prison break and officials are in communication with Mexican law enforcement, according to an e-mailed statement.

Ramos said in a press conference that police are investigating a shootout 160 miles south of Piedras Negras after the prison break to determine if any of the four people killed were fugitives.

He said that 86 of the escaped inmates were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, such as drug trafficking, and the rest faced state charges.

Other Mexican states have said in the past that they are not prepared to handle highly dangerous federal prisoners.

It was one of the larger prison breaks to hit Mexico's troubled penitentiary system in recent years.

In December 2010, 153 inmates escaped from a prison in the northern city of Nuevo Laredo, right across Laredo, Texas. Authorities charged 41 guards with aiding the inmates in that escape. Mexico's drug gangs frequently try to break their members out of prison.

Coahuila, where Monday's prison break took place, has seen a wave of violence tied to the brutal Zetas cartel's battles with the Sinaloa cartel, allies of the now weakened Gulf Cartel.

Authorities in Coahuila did not say which gang was believed to be behind the escape.

Last week, Gulf cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez was arrested, leading experts to anticipate an increase in violence in parts of northern Mexico as the Zetas Cartel attempted to take over turf.
In Piedras Negras, family members had gathered outside the prison to hear word of their loved ones.

129 inmates still on the run after escape from Mexican border prison | Fox News

Guess where they are coming..

Please, don't come to the USA.......

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
September 18, 2012, 2:52 p.m
Los Angeles Times

HOUSTON -- Texas border patrol agents were on alert Tuesday for more than 130 inmates who escaped from prison in a Mexican border town.

The inmates escaped through a 21-foot tunnel from the prison in Piedras Negras, and more than half had been serving time for federal crimes, including drug trafficking, officials told ABC News. Piedras Negras is just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio.

The attorney general of Coahuila state, Homero Ramos Gloria, said that three employees of the prison, including the director, were being questioned about the potential involvement of staff in the mass breakout, according to Mexican media reports. Investigators also detained a dozen prison guards.

Ramos told a Mexican television station that the escapees' tunnel, which was 4 feet wide, "was not made today. It had been there for months."

"We have 132 inmates escaping through a tunnel," said Ramos, "and it doesn't make sense."

The inmates staged their escape just after 2 p.m. Monday, according to Mexican media. The inmates overpowered guards, escaped through the tunnel within 15 minutes, cut a chain-link fence and went through a vacant lot.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials told the Los Angeles Times that they were aware of the escape and have been in touch with Mexican officials.

"CBP is aware of the reported jail break in northern Mexico, and out of an abundance of caution, has placed its officers and agents in the Eagle Pass, Texas, area on alert," said spokesman Dennis Smith. "At this point, CBP has no reports of escapees attempting to cross the border."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has two stations in Eagle Pass, but Smith declined to say how many agents are stationed there, citing security concerns.

He said officials have not received any reports of Mexican fugitives from the prison break trying to cross the border.

"We will continue coordinating with our Mexican counterparts as we monitor this situation," Smith said.

Two years ago, more than 150 inmates escaped from a prison in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. Forty-one guards were charged with aiding in that escape, the largest in Mexico in recent memory.

During a 2009 escape at a prison farther south in Zacatecas, more than two dozen men dressed as federal police officers raided the prison and freed more than 50 members of the Zetas cartel.

One Old Vet

Mexico prison break: 130 escape; Texas border agents on alert - latimes.com

Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Houston Chronicle reporter Dudley Althaus in Mexico City and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The tabloid-style headline writers in Mexico have deemed them megafugas - megaescapes - and in the past two years, 13 massive prison breaks have occurred, mostly in the country's troubled north.

In the latest escape, about 130 people slipped under the walls Monday of a prison across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass in a breakout likely orchestrated by the Zetas drug cartel to replenish its ranks, experts said.

Officials said at least 86 of those who escaped in a tunnel were being held on federal charges, which usually means drug trafficking.

Three of the inmates were found hiding Tuesday in a prison visiting area

The massive escape didn't top the record of more than 150 prisoners who broke out of a facility in Nuevo Laredo in 2010. Officials at the time said it was organized by Zetas, who loaded the prisoners into a convoy of vehicles as they walked out of a maintenance door.

Officials are offering a $16,000 reward for information leading to the capture of each of the fugitives, but megafuga escapees rarely are caught.

Echoing his reaction to the Nuevo Laredo prison break, Mexican President Felipe Calderón criticized state officials for the escape.

Calderón, who leaves office in 10 weeks and has made the reform and improvement of state police systems a pillar of his struggling six-year campaign against organized crime, called the Coahuila prison break "deplorable" in a Twitter posting.

"The deplorable vulnerability of state justice institutions must be corrected," he tweeted.

But while officials in the state of Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located, had blamed Calderón and his cartel war for the escape in 2010, officials in the nearby state of Coahuila seemed caught off guard.

The prison, about two miles from the Rio Grande outside the city of Piedras Negras, was built to hold 1,000, but housed 735 before the escape.

The tunnel "was not made today. It had been there for months," Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos told the Milenio TV station. "The prison was not overcrowded, none of our prisons are. We have 132 inmates escaping through a tunnel, and it doesn't make sense."

In recent years, Mexican prisons have been the scenes of brutal assassinations, and their gates have been revolving doors for cartel killers.

"How do prison authorities not determine that the prisoners are building a 21-foot tunnel from a carpentry shop?" asked Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "In Eagle Pass, Police Chief Tony Castañeda said his officers are being extra vigilant.

Prison break not rare in Mexico border city - Houston Chronicle

Mexico hunts for escaped inmates, cartel suspected

September 19,2012
By Raul Llamas

Mexican authorities hunted for 131 escaped inmates near the US border after a mass prison break which officials suspect was organized by the ultra-violent Zetas drug cartel.

Some 5,000 Mexican soldiers and police fanned out across the Texas border region, causing traffic jams as they inspected trucks and cars, one day after the prisoners fled through a tunnel in the northern state of Coahuila.

Across the Rio Grande, US authorities were on alert and patrolled their side of the border with helicopters amid concerns that the inmates could make a run for the United States.

Jorge Luis Moran, public security secretary in the northern state of Coahuila, told reporters that those at large had links to the Zetas.

"The line of investigation is that the Zetas cartel was able to organize the escape because the prisoners who were held on federal charges had ties with this group," Moran told local radio.

State police officers were attacked by gunmen with high-caliber weapons and grenades when they tried to reach the prison after Monday's escape, raising suspicions that the Zetas were involved, he added.

A source close to the state prosecutor's office said the escape may be linked to the Zetas' battle against the rival Gulf Cartel.

Several prison escapes have taken place in the last two years in Mexico, a country struggling to stem a relentless wave of murders and kidnappings committed by an array of warring traffickers.

"The drug cartels have taken their internal wars into the prisons," said Jose Luis Musi, a prison issues expert at the United Nations University.
Last February, 30 Zetas members escaped from a prison in the northern state of Nuevo Leon during a massacre that killed 44 inmates from the Gulf Cartel. Some prison guards confessed to taking part in the plot.

And in December 2010, 141 inmates fled from the Nuevo Laredo prison in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the latest escape "deplorable" and slammed the "vulnerability" of state penitentiaries, noting that more than 1,000 inmates have escaped from such prisons in the last six years.

Monday's escape took place in the border city of Piedras Negras. Officials revised the number of escaped inmates from 132 to 131.
The prisoners escaped one-by-one through a seven-meter-long (22-foot-long) tunnel that started in the carpentry workshop and surfaced at the prison's northern watchtower.

After emerging from the tunnel, which was 2.90 meters (9.5 feet) deep and 1.20 meters wide, the inmates cut through a perimeter fence and slipped away.

The prison's director, security chief and shift guard have been detained and all of the penitentiary's guards will be summoned for questioning over possible complicity in the escape, said state attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria.

The guards must explain "why nobody found out that this tunnel was being built," he added.

Authorities in Coahuila said they were investigating whether escaped convicts were involved in a shoot-out with a special police unit in the nearby town of Castanos in which four suspects were killed.

The prosecutor's office said 86 of the escaped inmates were in prison for federal crimes while the others faced a variety of charges.

The state government offered rewards of 200,000 pesos ($15,600) for information leading to the capture of each inmate.

Mexico hunts for escaped inmates, cartel suspected - Yahoo! News UK

Grenades?
http://www.alipac.us/f12/atfs-myster...ngress-256071/

I wonder:

Jun. 18, 2012
• Hundreds of replica Mexican military uniforms were found last month in a workshop in the border town of Piedras Negras (across from Eagle Pass, Texas).

http://www.alipac.us/f9/numbers-why-...3/#post1304258