Hidalgo and Willacy counties agree on jail food contract

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Officials in Hidalgo and Willacy counties have come to an agreement regarding meals for inmates being held at the Willacy County Jail.

Hidalgo County — via a third party contractor — will provide three square meals a day to Willacy County’s inmates at cost, according to a copy of the agreement signed by officials in both counties.

The meals will come from La Salle Corrections, a Louisiana-based private prison company that Hidalgo County hired to oversee the day-to-day operations at another jail in Willacy County that Hidalgo is using to offset prisoner overflow.

That jail — once a federal prison run by Management and Training Corporation, or MTC — shut down in April 2022 after an executive order from President Joe Biden forced the reduction of federal prisons operated by private companies.

But with the MTC jail’s closure came huge headaches for officials in rural Willacy County.

That’s because the Willacy County Sheriff’s Office had depended on the private prison to provide meals for local inmates being held in the county lockup, which does not have industrial kitchen facilities.

It cost Willacy both a lot of time and money to feed its prisoners in MTC’s absence.

With the MTC gone, Willacy turned instead to Cameron County and its jail. Each day since, Willacy County officials have driven dozens of miles to pick up meals in Brownsville.

But not long after the MTC jail closed, Willacy thought it had found a solution to its problem as, just a few months later, Hidalgo County proposed leasing the abandoned jail.

Officials in both counties considered it a win-win.

Willacy needed food for its prisoners in addition to money to repay the debt it took on to construct the former MTC prison in the first place, and Hidalgo County needed space to deal with its prisoner overcrowding issue.

By November 2022, the two counties had inked a deal on a 50-year lease of the jail with the promise that, once it was open, Hidalgo would take on the meal prepping responsibilities.

But that promise wound up on hold as Hidalgo County spent more than a year and millions of dollars to renovate the jail, which had only been vacant for seven months before the county leased it.

The Willacy jail didn’t see its first Hidalgo County inmates until late-July of this year, when it almost immediately reached its 450-person capacity.

It took several months more before the two counties could further work out the kinks on the cooking.

For Willacy County Judge Aurelio “Keter” Guerra, the news was not only welcome, but couldn’t come soon enough.

“As you know, we’re eager to have these foods prepared here locally,” Guerra said during a Nov. 14 meeting of the Willacy County Commissioners Court.

“If anything, just the trip is killing us,” he said.

Hidalgo County officials gave their final nod of approval during a commissioners court meeting last Tuesday.

According to the terms of the agreement, Hidalgo County must notify La Salle of the number of meals needed each day at least 24 hours in advance.

The for-profit prison company will then prepare meals on individual trays at a rate of $2 per meal for regular meals, and $8 for any meals made to satisfy religious or other dietary restrictions.

Willacy County staffers will be responsible for picking up and returning the trays at the door of the La Salle-run jail.

The initial term of the agreement will last for the next two years, with options to renew for another year thereafter.

La Salle Corrections is currently on the tail end of year two of its own eight-year contract with Hidalgo County to provide administrative services at the jail.

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