ustxtxb_obs_2009_10_02_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

THE P INSURRECTION HOW A PRIVATE PRISON PUSHED IMMIGRANT INMATES TO THE BRINK WILDER Top: Prisoner takeover of the Reeves County Detention Center, February 2009. IL.ast Dec. 12, on the outskirts of Pecos, Texas, the immigrants doing time in the world’s largest privately run prison decided to turn the tables on their captors. It was the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an important religious holiday in Latin America. But the inmates were in no mood for celebration. The motin, as the overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking inmates called their uprising, began in the Reeves County as solitary confinement, with two mena Honduran and photo: Smokey Briggs, Pecos Enterprise a Mexicanusing the wires in an electrical outlet to set a mattress on fire. They broke out the windows of their cell, and when prison guards tried to extinguish the fire by sticking a fire hose through a port in the door, the two broke the sink off the wall and held it up as a shield. One brandished, but didn’t use, a “shiv,” a crude jailhouse knife. Meanwhile, the two men yelled for other inmates to join in the uprising. Soon, at 12:45 p.m., a lockdown order went out across the prison. Staff tried to hustle prisoners on their way to lunch or the recreation center back to their cells. Inmates in one of the housing areas refused, and they forced