Mexico Cleans Up Notorious Prison

About 1,500 federal police officers, with helicopters watching overhead, entered La Mesa penitentiary Tuesday to handcuff and transfer 2,000 prisoners, beginning a program to transform a prison so loosely run that some inmates built their own homes and stores inside, and even lived there with their families.

The most dangerous convicted murderers, drug traffickers and other inmates from La Mesa were herded onto buses and trucks and driven to a new prison in El Hongo, a small town 60 miles east of Tijuana. A spokesman for the state of Baja California said 43 prisoners considered leaders of a drug distribution network that operated inside and outside the Mexican prison were dispersed to other maximum-security prisons.

State officials said they would immediately begin to raze the center of the prison, called El Pueblito, or The Little Town. There, wealthier inmates built more than 400 homes, some equipped with computers, phones, DVD players and bars. The plan is to turn La Mesa into a conventional state prison--with cellblocks, no frills and no family--for the more than 3,000 inmates who will remain.

Hundreds of women and children who had lived inside were escorted out Tuesday, carrying their belongings. The families were taken aboard buses to a temporary shelter installed at a local auditorium, and officials promised to try to find housing for them.

About 40 children who have no known guardian except for the inmate each lived with were taken away by state social workers.

The facility, about 15 minutes’ drive from the U.S., was basically run by inmate gangs. Previous plans to clean it up were never executed because of fears of rioting and reportedly because prisoners paid kickbacks to prevent change.