AP sources: Officials mulling ousting US prisons director
WASHINGTON >> Senior Biden administration officials have discussed whether to remove the holdover director of the beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons who has been at the center of the agency’s myriad crises.
The discussions about whether to fire Michael Carvajal are in the preliminary stages and a final decision hasn’t yet been made, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. They were not authorized to publicly discuss the internal talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.
But there’s an indication that the bureau is shaking up its senior ranks following growing criticism of chronic mismanagement, blistering reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general and a bleak financial outlook.
Since the death of Jeffrey Epstein at a federal lockup in New York in August 2019, The Associated Press has exposed one crisis after another, including rampant spread of coronavirus inside prisons and a failed response to the pandemic, escapes, deaths and critically low staffing levels that have hampered responses to emergencies.
At least two regional directors, the officials in charge of federal lockups in the South Central and the Southeast regions — including a Texas prison where
inmates routinely walked off the grounds to retrieve drugs and other contraband delivered to them in the woods — are also being replaced.
The Bureau of Prisons said the two regional directors — Juan Baltazar, Jr. and J.A. Keller — are retiring and had been planning to do so. But two other people familiar with the matter said that neither had planned to leave for months and were told other officials were being appointed to their jobs.
On Wednesday, the agency said it was appointing wardens William Lothrop and Heriberto Tellez to the regional posts. Tellez is currently in charge of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where a 34-year-old inmate was found dead in his cell early Wednesday.
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is also being
held at the jail. Last year, her lawyers sought to question Tellez about the constant surveillance she has been subjected her to since her arrest on sex trafficking charges, but a judge refused.
The Justice Department, which runs the bureau, did not directly address whether officials were considering removing Carvajal, one of the few remaining holdovers from the Trump administration. Instead it said it was working to put in place recommendations made by both the department’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office and is undertaking other changes.
“Director Carvajal has formed a task force to help address the fundamental challenges facing BOP,” the Justice Department said in a statement to the AP. “That work is an important priority.”