Family not notified of federal detainee's death at Lerdo Jail
BY STEVE E. SWENSON, Californian staff writer
e-mail: sswenson@bakersfield.com | Friday, May 9 2008 3:21 PM
Last Updated: Friday, May 9 2008 3:36 PM

Walter Rodriguez-Castro regularly wrote to his family in the San Francisco Bay Area from his cell in Lerdo Jail.


Source: Sheriff’s Lt. Earl BarnesIn spring 2006, Rodriguez-Castro was held in a portion of the local jail reserved for federal detainees.

Then in late April 2006, the flow of letters stopped.

The family of the 28-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador called the jail to find out what was going on.

His mother, Ana Castro of San Francisco, and his wife, Caterina Ormeno of Daly City, got no answers.

Finally on June 27 of that year, Ormeno went to a scheduled immigration hearing for her husband in San Francisco. He wasn’t there. She asked why.

He was dead, she learned.

He died April 23, 2006, at San Joaquin Hospital from complications due to meningitis and HIV, the Kern County coroner’s staff reported.

While the jail regularly releases information when a local inmate dies behind bars, the county does not do so when the inmate is being held for the federal government. In fact, Rodriguez-Castro’s death remained relatively unknown until a New York Times nationwide investigation into in-custody deaths.

The experience of Rodriguez-Castro’s family is a familiar pattern, according to the investigation.

As far as Rodriguez-Castro’s mother knew, her son was healthy. He worked for a moving company and he used to play ball at a park in Daly City, she told The Californian in a telephone conversation.

He was arrested March 1, 2006 at the park on an immigration hold, and spent some time in a Yuba County jail before he was transferred April 17, 2006, to the Lerdo Jail. Just six days before his death.

The late notice of the death hurt the family.

“I felt bad,â€