Based on reports from Mexican media, Monday afternoon around two 132 inmates from the Ceresoa prison a few miles north of Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
The prison sits roughly two miles from the Rio Grande and five miles from Eagle Pass, Texas.
The prisoners escaped through a hole that was dug from inside the compound. Guardsmen and other officials have been taken in for questioning.
The breakout triggered local and federal law enforcement on the Texas side of the border to go on “high alert” – a level that carries no significant change in protocol for police in Eagle Pass, according to Police Chief Juan “Tony” Cardenas.
Cardenas says the news of the outbreak kept him and his department in close talks with the local Maverick County sheriff department and US Border Patrol – but not Mexican authorities.
Cardenas states he has been told by officials in Mexico, “[They] do not think any of the inmates will cross the border into the United States.” Cardenas agrees with that idea and credits media attention and a heightened presence from the Border Patrol as leading factors.
The police chief adds based on what he has been told, the break out appears have been a recruiting effort by cartels that have lost members of their own over years due to bloody gunfights with rival cartels.
At last check, Border Patrol or Maverick County Sheriff’s Department reported any attempted crossings of the Rio Grande along the Del Rio Sector of the river. The Del Rio Sector is a 200 mile stretch of the border running from Laredo to a few miles west of Amistad Reservoir west of Del Rio.
Eagle Pass is roughly 150 miles southwest of San Antonio along the banks of the Rio Grande.
