Indictment Links State Sen. Uresti to Private Prison Contract at Scandal-Plagued Lockup for Immigran
Indictment Links State Sen. Uresti to Private Prison Contract at Scandal-Plagued Lockup for Immigrants
Jesus Manuel Galindo was supposed to serve 30 months at the Reeves County Detention Center after border guards caught him swimming across the Rio Grande to visit family in New Mexico. When he got to the sprawling West Texas prison complex, Galindo told the private prison guards who ran the place he had a history of epileptic seizures. When he complained he wasn't getting the right anti-seizure meds, Galindo somehow wound up in solitary confinement. In letters to his mother, Galindo wrote that he was already having seizures in isolation and had begged guards not to leave him alone in his cell in case it happened again.
Which it did, in December 2008, when Galindo suffered a grand mal seizure while alone in his cell at night. His body was already cold and showed signs of rigor mortis when guards found him the next morning. Inmates began setting fires to mattresses when they saw guards carting Galindo's lifeless body out of his cell. The death ultimately sparked a full-blown riot as inmates took prison staff hostage, set fires across the complex and caused more than $1 million in damage (the Texas Observer dubbed it "The Pecos Insurrection"
. A lawsuit the ACLU later filed against the facility on behalf of Galindo's family listed Physicians Network Associates (PNA) as a defendant, alleging the for-profit company under contract for health care services at the detention center had denied inmates like Galindo even the most basic medical necessities.
In an indictment unsealed this week, federal prosecutors accuse State Sen. Carlos Uresti of pocketing thousands of dollars over the past decade in a bribery scheme to ensure PNA and its "successor companies" kept that contract.
Uresti's alleged involvement in the Reeves County contract is one of two criminal cases against the longtime Democratic lawmaker that the feds unveiled this week. Another indictment accuses Uresti of profiting off what prosecutors call "an investment Ponzi scheme" involving FourWinds, a now-defunct company that tried to bank off the South Texas oil boom by selling frac sand to oil and gas drillers. An indictment in that case was pretty much expected after the FBI and IRS raided Uresti's downtown law offices earlier this year (the Express-News detailed Uresti's involvement in the FourWinds debacle in an exhaustive story last year).
Read more: http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/05/18/indictment-links-san-antonio-lawmaker-to-private-prison-contract-at-scandal-plagued-immigration-lockup
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