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Thirty prisoners, including the leader of a feared cartel’s assassin squad serving a 224-year sentence, are still on the run after a deadly New Year’s Day prison break near the US border.

Security forces continue to search the region surrounding Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, for those who escaped in an attack that left 19 people dead.

Los Mexicles leader Ernesto ‘El Neto’ Piñón escaped the Cereso No.3 state prison on Sunday after members of the notorious street gang stormed into the penitentiary located just 16 miles from El Paso, , and helped him escape.

Authorities initially reported that César Vega, the criminal group’s second-in-command, had also escaped before later announcing he is among the seven inmates who were killed. 

At least 200 members of the gang have since been moved from the prison. The brazen assault left ten prison guards and two attackers dead. 

Authorities arrested five members of Los Mexicles following a high-speed chase and seized a cache of rifles and ammunition.

The United States Consulate in Ciudad Juárez advised US citizens in the border town to shelter in place after reports of gunfire Monday night.

A Monday afternoon gun battle at a housing complex left seven people dead, including two cops, while security forces hunted down the fleeing inmates.No arrests were reported.

The Cereso No. 3 prison director, Alejandro Téllez, was fired and placed under investigation Tuesday, the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

At least 200 Los Mexicles jailed members were loaded onto buses in the early hours Tuesday and transported to Abraham González International Airport, where they boarded two National Guard flights to other federal jails.

Mexico’s Secretary for Security and Citizen Protection, evdEN eVe NAkliyAt Rosa Rodríguez, had announced Monday that plans were underway to transfer high-risk inmates from the Cereso No.3 state prison to other penitentiaries in the country to prevent further attacks.

The Cereso No. 3 state prison was overpopulated by 123% at the time of the attack, National Commission of Human Rights director, Nestor Armendáriz, told Radio Formula.

The agency’s 2021 National Diagnosis of Penitentiary Supervision found that the prison was severely affected by overcrowding, lack of personnel and that not enough programs were being offered to prevent addiction and voluntary detoxification.

Saskia Niño del Rivera, cofounder of Reinserta, a non-profit that works with reintegrating and readapting convicts into society, called on the Mexican government to shut down the detention facility.

‘That prison has to be closed, it does not have the infrastructure to function, it does not have the elements, enough trained guards,’ Niño de Rivera told El Universal newspaper.

The activist pinned the prison’s unsavory conditions on the reality of the high presence of convicts who are members of the Los Jaliscos, Los Artistas Asesinos, Los Golfos and Los Mexicles street gangs.

‘It is a very complicated prison because of the way in which it has been divided by dormitories, and the complexity of closing them so that the same gangs do not clash internally is extremely complex,’ she said.

Niño del Rivera added that Cereso No. 3 state prison officials were simply overwhelmed because they were dealing ‘with inmates who have levels of crime and crime leadership capacity much higher than what a state has to control.’

The prisoners’ free reign allowed them to set up 10 jail cells that were equipped with electronic goods, EVDEN eve NAKLiYAt such as televisions, and one of them had its own jacuzzi, according to Defense Minister Luis Cresencio.

Investigators searching Piñón’s cell found 10 firearms, 20 kilos of drugs, liquor and a safe deposit box with $87,000.

Chihuahua State Attorney General Roberto Fierro vowed to restore the prison’s security system within three months while adding that they would seek to prosecute any official or guard involved in the attack that allowed Piñón and the other 29 inmates to escape.

‘Who did see it and who was allowing these actions, those are the ones who are going to bear the punishment because this should not have happened,’ Fierro said.’A series of corruption was discovered inside the prison; it must be said as it is.’

Piñón took the Los Mexicles top leadership spot after Jesús ‘El Lalo’ Soto was transferred out of the Cereso No. 3 state prison in February 2020.

He joined the gang as an 18-year-old in 2007 and was involved in numerous criminal incidents, including kidnappings, in Ciudad Juárez, where the faction acted as the main enforcer for Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s old Sinaloa Cartel.

Piñón was found guilty of kidnapping and murder in 2010 and sentenced to 224 years in prison.

Authorities say he was also involved in ordering a wave of assaults throughout Ciudad Juárez on August 11 that left 11 people dead, 20 injured and multiple vehicles and business torched.

At the same time, he organized a riot at the prison in an attempt to flee, but security forces were able to regain control.

The citywide assaults were part of a rift reportedly sparked by Los Mexicles’ fallout with the Sinaloa Cartel faction that is overseen by Los Chapitos – El Chapo’s children – as the gang formed new alliance with Los Aztecas, the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel.

Los Mexicles had also joined forces with the Caborca Cartel, the criminal organization founded by infamous jailed drug lord, Rafael Caro Quintero, who is awaiting extradition to the United States, where he is accused of the 1986 kidnapping and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Kiki Camarena.

The Caborca Cartel is also at odds with Los Chapitos.

Vega served as Piñón’s main confidant at the prison, where they both shared a cell.

He was deported to Mexico in September 2015, almost four years after he was arrested at an El Paso, Texas, fried chicken restaurant.

Vega was detained December 27, 2011 at Church’s Chicken where he was employed as a cook a year after he fled from Mexican authorities after the ambush of the prison van he was being transported in, according to U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He and seven other Los Mexicles gang members abducted Natividad Torres at his Ciudad Juárez home on September 15, 2009.

The kidnappers sought a return of $47,000 in exchange for Torres’ release but ended up settling for just $700, a television and a 2008 Toyota.Torres was shot four times on September 15 and released the following day.

He died October 21 as a result of the gunshot wound and evdeN Eve nAKLiyAT Vega and four other kidnappers were arrested the next month.

Vega was sentenced to 42 years for kidnapping and murder.