The Federal Prison Field in the center of Texas, where Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred last week, has increased security measures in response to his arrival, according to a senior law official.
While the officer attributes the improved security to the presence of Maxwell, they could not say if there have been direct threats to her, other inmates or the Federal Field of Bryan prisoners.
The members of the Special Operations Response Team of the Federal Prison Operations Office have been placed outside the main entrance of FPC Bryan since the weekend to verify the identifications and greet the people, two current employees said to NBC News.
They say that it is an unknown view in the minimum and women’s security camp, where staff and visitors can generally enter the land without going through a rigorous security protocol, employees said. The camp, which houses about 635 prisoners and is located in a residential neighborhood, has wrought iron fences on the front, as well as a chain fencing with shaving wire around the perimeter.
Security “is not like that of the penitentiary or the medium [security]”Said an employee, who asked not to be appointed for fear of working reprisal, NBC News last week.
The members of the special operations team are highly trained to respond to disturbances and security violations in federal prisons and are deputies for the US Sheriff Service. UU. They were deployed in protests against brutality against the police during the first Trump administration, and more recently, they helped in the response to mortal floods of July 4 in Texas Hill Country.
A BOP spokesman said that the agency does not “discuss specific security procedures” when asked about the increase in safety at FPC Bryan and if it is connected to Maxwell, who was transferred from a low security installation in Tallahassee, Florida, FPC Bryan during the night on Friday.
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, also did not respond immediately to a comment request on Wednesday. Markus has not answered previous questions about the security and details of Maxwell that surround his transfer.
Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his role in recruitment and trafficking in children as co-conspirator and confidant of the Rico Financial Jeffrey Epstein. In 2019, Epstein committed suicide in a cell in the Manhattan prison while facing sexual trafficking and conspiracy charges.
But his case has been renewed scrutiny in recent weeks after the Trump administration decided not to release all federal archives related to Epstein, which caused a protest of parts of the president’s base that have fed conspiracies and pushed unfounded narrative that surround the death of Epstein.
Maxwell also returned to the center of attention when it was revealed that the attached attorney general Todd Blanche met with her last month for nine hours in a federal court in Tallahassee.
A source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Tuesday that the Trump administration is considering publishing a transcription of the interview.
But it is not clear why Maxwell, a few days after the meeting with the second in command of the Department of Justice, was transferred to FPC Bryan, where employees say that inmates are granted more freedoms in bedroom -style homes in which the rooms of the inmates are not blocked and can wandering in outdoor and recreational spaces.
Trump told journalists on Tuesday that he didn’t know that Maxwell had been transferred to Texas camp until after it happened, and that transfers like Maxwell were common.
But the BOP policy indicates that Maxwell should not be eligible to be housed in a minimum security prisoner field because it is a sentenced sexual offender.
Sex criminals must be in at least one low -level security prison such as Maxwell was previously, unless the administrator of the Center for Computing of Sentences and BOP appointment is granted.
The presence of Maxwell in FPC Bryan has fueled the indignation among some current and previous employees of BOP who question why they would be placed there given their positions of sexual crime and the level of security that it would require. The majority of inmates in the camp are fulfilling time for non -violent crimes and white -collar crimes.
Epstein’s abuse survivor family, Virginia Giuffre, joined by Epstein and Maxwell, Annie and Maria Farmer accusers, have also criticized Maxwell’s measure and said in a statement that “you should never show any indulgence” as a condemned sexual criminal.
Charles Lockett, a former Federal Prison director who spent 31 years with the BOP, said he would never have approved the transfer of such a high profile inmate to a place like FPC Bryan.
Lockett said he would be especially concerned with the security risks raised for Maxwell, as well as for those who work there.
“They do not have the workforce there to deal with those people, and do not have the hardening structure,” said Lockett, who supervised Florida’s prison, where Boston James gangster “Whitey” Bulger was held before his condemned transfer to an installation in Western Virginia. “I just find incredible.”
