EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican authorities on Tuesday flew 214 of the most dangerous criminals in the state of Chihuahua to prisons elsewhere in Mexico.
Chihuahua State Public Safety Secretary Gilberto Loya said it’s an effort to reduce homicides and other violent crimes in Juarez and Chihuahua City.
“We want our prisons to be safe, but we are certain this also will bring down the number of homicides on the streets,” Loya said, referring to intelligence regarding imprisoned gang leaders masterminding murders and other crimes from their prison cells. “More transfers are pending if homicides don’t go down in Juarez and in Chihuahua City.”
Juarez recorded more than 200 homicides in the first two months of the year, most of them drug- or gang-related, according to police.
Border Report last month covered a high-profile trial in which suspects alleged an Artistas Asesinos, or Doblados gang leader instructed them from inside Cereso No 3 prison in Juarez to murder and dismember several people.
And this weekend, several bars, strip clubs and other businesses in Juarez received bomb threats; authorities allegedly traced the calls to the vicinity of Cereso No. 3 prison.
Loya said more than 1,000 state police officers, soldiers and Mexican National Guard troops carried out the transfers and patrolled the streets to prevent “protests” and rescue attempts by the gangs to which the inmates belong.
“These types of operations always are risky, but we try to mitigate those risks. We have a large presence of National Guard and army troops; we are (patrolling) the streets to cut down on those risks,” Loya said in a news conference broadcast on social media.
Video and photographs released by the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office showed inmates in gray sweat suits, hands behind their heads, being escorted out of three prisons and placed on airplanes.
State Deputy Prison Director Gen. (Ret.) Ricardo Fernandez Acosta said more than 80 prisoners from Juarez and nearly 130 transferred from two state jails in Chihuahua City were facing federal charges. That includes drug and weapons offenses, while many were also convicted of homicide, kidnapping and sex crimes.
They were flown to eight jails in Mexico City, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa and Michoacan.
Loya said the inmates did not resist. “We have been in charge of the prisons for about a year. We have been working on restoring governance and prevent crimes from (originating) from inside the prisons,” he said.
Violence broke out early Sunday, Jan. 1, 2023, at a state prison in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas.
On New Year’s Day 2023, some 30 inmates staged a bloody escape from Cereso No. 3 prison in Juarez resulting in the death of 10 guards and seven inmates. Loya said all but three of those fugitives have been recaptured and all of those were transferred out of Juarez on Tuesday.
Loya said the transfers will be followed by searches of jail cells in the coming days to look for hidden weapons, drugs, cell phones and other prohibited items typically smuggled by the prisoners’ relatives during visits.
He said visits to the prisons are suspended through Wednesday.
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