THE FORGOTTEN ONES: INCARCERATION TO WHAT END?

By Juan Montoya

We hadn't run into Felipe in many months and his name often came up in conversations among those of us who knew him.

Felipe was about as hardworking a businessman as you'd want to meet. He always had a sharp eye for an opportunity, and when he saw that large department stores like Target, Walmart, Dilliards, Marshalls, Old Navy, K-mart, etc., were selling pallets of slightly damaged merchandise and electronic appliances such as floor samples, he invested in the business.

He started buying the pallets of slightly damaged electronics of or floor samples for resale. He had a set up a shop in a warehouse on Lincoln Street by the railroad tracks where he repaired what he could and sold the items at discount. He was a big success at the 77 Flea Market where he did a good business.

But after a series of burglaries at the store and no arrests by the local cops, he moved to the large flea market in Pharr, where he traveled daily. As proof of his problems in Brownsville, he kept a collection of the business cards left him by the different police officers taking his reports. He had at least 20 to 25 cards in his truck when he gave up on Brownsville.
It was while doing business in Pharr that he ran into trouble. He bought some merchandise from vendors who approached him at the flea market and it turned out to be stolen. He was arrested and, unable to pay his bond and with an ICE hold, he decided to await trial in the Cameron County Ruben Torres Detention Center1 in downtown Brownsville.
While he was incarcerated, Pharr police caught the people who sold Felipe the hot merchandise. They confessed that they had stolen the stuff and that Felipe knew nothing of the crime. That's when the Cameron County DA office offered him a reduced charge and probation. By then he had spent five months incarcerated at the county jail at the expense of taxpayers. Once the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor and probation assessed, the ICE hold vanished and he was given his freedom.
In a cell in the neighboring DC 2, Roberto Zavala (not his real name) has spent four months awaiting his trial on resisting arrest in Port Isabel. Zavala also had an ICE hold because he was in the United States illegally. He was not fighting extradition, but delays in the city forwarding the information to the DA's office and postponements by his court-appointed attorney had extended his stay past the amount of time normally haded down first-time offenders on the charge.
He said he was ready to plead guilty and get it over with and be transferred to the federal government. But he rarely sees his attorney and when he does it's usually to learn that there has been yet another postponement of his case in court.
What is common about both these cases?
Every time that a case is delayed in court, or because court-appointed attorneys ask for postponement, it costs county taxpayers money to house, feed and guard these inmates. Many are being held for offenses that carry a sentence that will be fulfilled with the time already served. The sheriff, in charge of running the jails, can only do as the courts ask him. His jails are filled with cases like those of Rivera and Zavala.
Right now, the county is struggling under an unbudgeted cost of housing prisoners in Cameron County and facilities in Brooks and Willacy counties and in the Coastal Bend facility. The bottleneck, it is becoming evident, is with the courts that have not cleared the dockets of cases like those of these two inmates. Multiply that by scores of others and you can see why the county is struggling with the costs associated with housing these prisoners.