Thread: Authorities suspect prison break was inside job (alien gang)

http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor ... tion=Local
Authorities suspect prison break was inside job
September 21,2006
Kaitlin Bell and Andres R. Martinez
Monitor Staff Writers

LA VILLA — Prison and law enforcement authorities were investigating Wednesday whether a guard or other staffer at the La Villa detention facility may have helped the six federal inmates who escaped late Tuesday night.

The six escapees were housed in a single cell in a minimum-to-medium security building, even though five of them were known to be members of a Corpus Christi-based prison gang known as La Raza Unida, according to local and federal officials.

They broke out Tuesday at about 9:45 p.m. by threatening a guard with a homemade knife and then cutting a hole in the electric fence outside. They were still on the loose as of Wednesday night and considered armed and dangerous.

The five suspected La Raza Unida members — Fernando Garza-Cruz, Joel Armando Mata-Castro, Vicente Mendiola-Garcia, Enrique Peña-Saenz and Saul Leonardo Salazar-Aguirre — were illegal aliens from the Weslaco area held on immigration charges.

The sixth inmate, Francisco Meza-Rojas, is a former McAllen police officer facing trial on charges he and his four brothers smuggled marijuana and cocaine across the border from Mexico.

They were among approximately 950 inmates held at the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a federal prison privately run by a Louisiana company, LCS Correctional Services.

Company spokesman Richard Harbison confirmed the prisoners were housed together in an eight-bunk cell, even though he said facility managers try to not house gang members near one another.

The five illegal immigrants were members of La Raza Unida, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. But it is unclear whether prison officials knew of their affiliation.

Harbison, who traveled from Louisiana to Texas Wednesday because of the escape, said the prison would be conducting an internal investigation to determine what went wrong.

LCS also summoned a technology representative from the company that manufactured the fence to see whether it malfunctioned or whether someone had turned it off prior to the escape.

Harbison confirmed that prison officials worried the jailbreak might have been an inside job — as did the sheriff.

“From a law enforcement perspective, it appears to be highly suspicious,” said Treviño, whose agency initially led the manhunt.

LCS, which maintains seven prisons in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, has experienced several other jailbreaks at its Hidalgo and Brooks county prisons.

In fact, less than 24 hours after Tuesday night’s escape, an inmate en route to McAllen Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon jumped out of the back of the ambulance on Expressway 83 before a La Villa prison guard quickly apprehended him nearby on Jackson Road.

Another inmate pulled a similar stunt in September 2005, when he escaped from the parking lot at McAllen Medical Center after complaining of pains that prompted guards to transport him to the hospital. Federal agents captured him in March.

And, in 2002, two prisoners escaped from an LCS facility in Brooks County.

Two inmates — one held on a capital murder charge — also escaped from the La Villa facility in 2000, when it was run by another company named Texson. LCS took over the complex from Texson in 2001, when LCS officials say the previous owner went bankrupt. In that incident, authorities apprehended one escapee within 24 hours, but took two more years to apprehend the second.

Michael Hallett, chairman of the criminal justice department at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fla. and an expert on privately-run prisons, said such facilities face a greater risk of inmates escaping because they are typically understaffed and pay low salaries in order to make profits.

These working conditions make for high staff turnover rates, he said.

“So, you have poorly trained guards who are too few in number and who are very inexperienced — and that combination of factors makes them susceptible not just to corruption, but also to coercion by the inmates inside,” Hallett said.

“That sounds like an inside job,” Hallett said of the circumstances surrounding this week’s escape in La Villa.

The La Villa facility has come under scrutiny before, said U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Joe Magallan.

“We have arrested other jailers from that facility before,” he said. “Years back other jailers had been terminated for taking drugs in, taking bribes.”

Harbison claims the La Villa facility is far from understaffed, though.

It employs 180 guards to watch the approximately 950 inmates — a higher guard-to-inmate ratio than required under state law, he said. But it was not clear how many of those guards are actually on duty at the same time.

LCS Corrections, owner, LeBlanc, Michael W. Private prisons are BIG business and big political contributors. The more illegal aliens, the more business.

LeBlanc, Michael W. LCS Corrections Ser. Inc./Vice-Pres $1,000 05/23/2005 ORTIZ FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE - Democrat

LeBlanc, Michael W LCS Correction Services/CEO $2,000 05/04/2005 RUBEN HINOJOSA FOR CONGRESS - Democrat

http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/

Brooks County Detention Center (Fallfurrias, TX) — LCS Corrections immigrant detainee escapes from Brooks County Detention Center; the resulting manhunt involves over 100 officers from the Brooks County Sheriff’s Department, Department of Public Safety, Border Patrol, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and the local fire department (2004)

http://www.schr.org/prisonsjails/news/T ... 3mtgy.htm_

But less than two months later, when the board had shrunk to only three members - just enough for a quorum - it unanimously recommended immediate implementation of the contract. The LeBlancs also run Premier's parent company, LCS Correction Services, which has faced numerous lawsuits and investigations in its work running jails. They ran into legal trouble with a gambling operation on an American Indian reservation. Williamson was fined $100,000 by the National Association of Securities Dealers in the early 1990s and barred from associating with other NASD members.

http://www.flpba.org/private/rap_LCS.html__

The above is old but since it connects I thought it should be piggybacked.
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La Villa escapee to remain in Mexican jail
June 14, 2007 - 9:01AM
McALLEN – A La Villa prison escapee will serve 12 years in a Mexican jail before he is returned to United States to finish out his sentence, authorities said Thursday.

Saul Salazar-Aguirre was arrested in Reynosa last month on robbery charges unrelated to the crime that sent him to the East Hidalgo Detention Center in La Villa.

Eight months ago, Salazar-Aguirre and five other inmates used a homemade knife, cell phone and wire cutters to break out of the prison, which failed several state inspections in the years before the escape.

Five of those escapees are believed to be La Raza Unida gang members who were in the prison on federal immigration charges.

One of the men, Joel Armando Mata-Castro, surrendered to federal agents in Brownsville in October.

Authorities are still searching for the alleged ringleader, Francisco Meza-Rojas, a former McAllen police officer and alleged drug trafficker.

Three people have been arrested for aiding in the prison break. Two were convicted and one was found not guilty.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articl ... tml/_.html