Latin American Countries Release Thousands of Criminals from Prison

Security analysts worry they will end up at the US border

Handcuffs secure the back door of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection border patrol vehicle. David McNew/Getty Images

Overcrowding in Latin America’s prisons has been part of the region’s background noise for decades.

The area has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with detention numbers averaging 163 percent of prison capacity as of 2020.

However, the leaders of five nations within striking distance of the U.S. border are taking a new approach to the problem.

Lawmakers in Mexico, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are offering early release to thousands of criminals with “minor offenses” or who are awaiting trial.

In Cuba and Venezuela, lawbreakers and regime offenders are not only being released, many are exiled.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent watches over a group of illegal immigrants after tracking them through rugged terrain at the Organ Pipe National Monument, Ariz., on Sept. 28, 2022. John Moore/Getty Images

Consequently, U.S. security analysts and legislators are voicing concerns. With security forces overwhelmed at America’s besieged southern border, some say the door is wide open to those with a criminal past and no incentive to stay home.

Illegal immigrant arrests at the U.S. southern frontier surpassed 2 million for the 2022 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. This shattered the previous year’s tally of 1.7 million arrests.

“We have already seen the effects of similar policy in large urban areas in the United States,” security lawyer Irina Tsukerman told The Epoch Times.

Tsukerman is a strategic adviser, geopolitical analyst, and president of Scarab Rising. She explained that public policy and a lack of law enforcement in some U.S. cities have created similar effects to what will likely happen in Latin America.

In both scenarios, more criminals end up on the streets.

Excess lawbreakers on the loose in the United States have generated upticks in both minor and violent crimes, according to Tsukerman. She says the same formula will produce comparable results in countries throughout the Americas, but with a key difference.

“The likely consequence will be an increased flow in the number of criminals to the [U.S.] borders,” she said, adding, “Including successful border crossings.”

Protecting The ‘Innocent’

In Mexico, the bottlenecked legal system was enough to free 2,685 residents in September. The order came into force after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 2021 order, which granted amnesty to those waiting for their trials or whose legal rights had been violated.

Within that pool of criminals, 2,032 prisoners weren’t categorized in designations such as women, elderly, afflicted with chronic disease, foreigners, or indigenous. They were solely identified as having “met the legal requirements for early release.”

“It is ... an act of justice for those who have not committed serious crimes or crimes related to violence. Humble people who have not been able to pay for a lawyer, have a translator, or have faced all kinds of adversity,” secretary of security Rosa Icela Rodriguez said during a press conference.

In February, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso announced the pardon of 5,000 prisoners to ease the dangerous overcrowding in the country’s penitentiaries. Tensions between rival gangs in packed jail cells exploded in 2021, culminating in riots that claimed the lives of 350 detainees.

Tight proximity between rival gang members sparked another prison riot in April this year at the El Turi prison, killing 20 more inmates.

Soldiers stand guard outside Turi prison after a deadly prison riot in Cuenca, Ecuador, on April 3, 2022. Marcelo Suquilanda/AP Photo

The Ecuadorian penal code dictates that prison inmates who have served 60 percent of their sentence are eligible for consideration of early release.

Lasso claimed that by pardoning minor offenders, population pressure would be reduced within the hotbed of violence simmering behind prison bars.

In a press statement, Lasso said he wanted to “protect many innocent citizens who committed minor crimes, mistakes in their lives.”

Nicaragua’s government followed suit in April 2022. Vice President Rosario Murillo ordered the release of 1,000 petty criminals from the country’s jails.

Murillo said the offenders would be sent home to “serve their sentences under the family cohabitation regime.”

The Central American nation has a history of releasing criminals early to serve the remainder of their sentences under house arrest. Between 2014 and 2021, the Sandinista regime granted early release to 33,690 prisoners.

Prison Or Exile

For some Latin American governments, pardoning criminals kills two birds with one stone.

This is particularly true in Cuba and Venezuela, where entrenched dictators continue to silence opposition voices and protesters.

“The communist regime in Cuba has long used the prison-or-exile method to rid itself of dissidents and also to facilitate the exodus to the United States of convicted criminals,” analyst and author Orlando Guiterrez-Boronat told The Epoch Times.

Boronat noted the regimes in Cuba and Venezuela are masters of “weaponizing immigration” in order to have leverage on U.S. policy.

“They have done it over and over again and are doing it now,” he said.

Boronat believes a mass exodus of Cubans sent via Nicaragua to the U.S. southern border is the communist regime’s ultimate goal.

In recent months, Venezuelans and Cubans have been heading for the United States in droves.

Border officials reported encounters with 220,908 Cubans and 187,716 Venezuelans in the fiscal year 2022.

U.S. legislators have also expressed alarm at the potential for criminal castaways to join migrant caravans.

In September, an alleged Department of Homeland Security report surfaced, stating Venezuelan convicts—some of whom committed violent crimes—were identified in migrant caravans heading toward the United States border from Tapachula, Mexico.

The report expressed concerns the administration of President Nicolas Maduro may have been directly involved in the effort.

Congressman Troy Nehls (R-Texas) responded to the report with demands for “transparency and accountability” from the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, in a letter endorsed by 13 other GOP legislators.

“These concerns are real because even before the release of petty criminals, there has been a wave of undocumented migrants with criminal records or who have committed crimes upon arrival,” Tsukerman said.