EL PASO, Texas – A Mexican woman who said she was forced to remain locked up against her will in a Ciudad Juarez prison in a case of corruption there has applied for asylum in the United States, her attorney said.Mariana Ibarra Moran, 21, decided to seek refuge in the U.S. because Mexican authorities would not guarantee her safety after she revealed the corruption taking place in the Juarez jail, said her attorney in El Paso, Carlos Spector.
That prison, the Social Rehabilitation Center, or Cereso, in Ciudad Juarez, will be visited Wednesday by Pope Francis.
Ibarra said she was forced to stay in the jail against her will following a conjugal visit on Feb. 6 because her former partner, Jesus Eduardo Soto Rodriguez, alias “El Lalo,” convicted of kidnapping, bribed the guards to keep her there.
“They didn’t let her go because he (Jesus Eduardo Soto Rodriguez) didn’t want them to. It was then that her family went to the press and demanded her release,” Spector told EFE. “After that, they filed a complaint about gender violence, and it was then that the nightmare began.”
The attorney said that this is the strongest case for political asylum he has seen in 25 years, since the woman is “the victim of domestic violence in the prison, in collusion with Cereso officials.”
He said the case combines all the aspects and possibilities needed to obtain political asylum in the United States, because this is a woman who has been the victim of abuse by her partner who kept her captive in jail with the consent of the authorities.
Among the woman’s other revelations, according to Spector, was the fact that inmates have access to the Internet, which allows them to continue working for organized crime from inside the prison.
The young woman decided last Wednesday to seek asylum in the United States together with her 6-month-old child, her sister and her mother, the attorney said.
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