They stopped using the houses confiscated from organized crime as places of attachment

Gustavo Castillo Garcia

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, October 17, 2022, p. 3

The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) stopped using houses seized from members of organized crime as detention centers – as was the case until the government of Felipe Calderón – and only uses the so-called Federal Detention Center for this precautionary measure, which is It is located in the Doctores neighborhood, in Mexico City, although it denied having information on the annual expenditure it allocates for food for detainees, but in 2015 it spent 280 pesos per person.

In response to a request for public information submitted by the daythe institution headed by Alejandro Gertz Manero responded that “after conducting an exhaustive and thorough search in the corresponding files (…) there is only the Federal Rooting Center, located at Dr. Ignacio Morones Prieto Street, number 43.”

In the letter FGR/UTAG/DG /006414/2022, the ministerial institution added that there is no record of the use of secured houses for members of criminal groups as places of detention; consequently, it is reiterated that the only detention center used by the FGR It is the site that in 2002 was acquired by the then Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and that was the Central Park hotel, which was transformed to shelter suspected criminals for periods ranging from 20 to 80 days.

However, even during the administration of Felipe Calderón as president and Marisela Morales Ibáñez as prosecutor, the Federal Public Ministry used the addresses located at Cráter 20 and Risco 550, in the Pedregal de San Ángel neighborhood; Cepheid Star 83, Prados Coyoacán; an apartment at 1515 Heriberto Frías Avenue, Del Valle neighborhood, and Santa Úrsula 87, Xitle neighborhood.

Between 2004 and 2018, the PGR kept more than 12,000 people in custody; however, from the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto and as attorney Jesús Murillo Karam, the arraigo measure was used less, and from March 2019 to June this year, the FGR has only used this measure against 62 people. .

The Federal Arraigo Center has the capacity to accommodate 240 people, according to information provided by the FGR. Records of the ministerial institution indicate that in 2015 it spent 280 pesos for the daily maintenance of each person and that annually it came to represent an expenditure of more than 80 million pesos.

In the request presented by this newspaper, the FGR replied that after a exhaustive search could not locate information in terms of the annual expenditure on food for people who are subjected to this precautionary measure in the Federal Center of Settlement.