Blog

County Office is not affiliated with any government agency. Third party advertisements support hosting, listing verification, updates, and site maintenance. Information found on CountyOffice.org is strictly for informational purposes and does not construe legal, financial or medical advice.Popularity:#1 of 2 Sheriff Departments in Eagle Pass#1 of 2 Sheriff Departments in Maverick County#17 of 347 Sheriff Departments in Texas#136 in Sheriff Departments

The Maverick County Sheriffs Office / Tom Bowles Detention Center, located in Eagle Pass, Texas, is a law enforcement agency that promotes public safety in Maverick County through public policing and the management of county jails and inmates. The Sheriff’s Office is responsible for patrolling any unincorporated areas of the county or areas not covered by the municipal Police force as well as enforcing legal judgments such as foreclosures, repossessions, and tax delinquencies.Address and Phone Number for Maverick County Sheriffs Office / Tom Bowles Detention Center, a Sheriff Department, at Balboa Jones Memorial, Eagle Pass TX.

The women’s section of the former Cook County jail near Hubbard Street is the setting used for the musical Chicago, as well as its 2002 film adaptation. The present jail is used in segments of TV series including Chicago Fire and Better Call Saul.

The jail has held several well-known and infamous criminals, including Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, Larry Hoover, Jeff Fort, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy and the Chicago Seven.

One of the largest clusters of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the entire United States occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 22, 2020, at least 812 confirmed cases were linked to the jail; due to a lack of testing, the actual number of infections linked to the jail is believed to be higher. The jail’s inmate population dropped by almost one-fifth during the coronavirus pandemic after a state judge ordered a review of cases involving low-risk, primarily non-violent detainees. At least six inmates and one guard have died.

In July 2008, the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice released a report finding that the Eighth Amendment civil rights of the inmates has been systematically violated. The report found that the CCJ failed to adequately protect inmates from harm or risk of harm from other inmates or staff; failed to provide adequate suicide prevention; failed to provide adequate sanitary environmental conditions; failed to provide adequate fire safety precautions; and failed to provide adequate medical and mental health care.

And as of 26 July 2022, there has been one case of monkeypox in the prison with an inmate testing positive for the virus which is unlikely to spread across the prison.

In the mid-to-late-1800s suspects in serious criminal matters were held at the site of the Cook County Criminal Court Building on Hubbard Street in a jail attached to the courthouse (the jail part was on the same block, at the back, and is sometimes identified by reference to the corner of Dearborn and Illinois Streets). A separate short-stay city jail called the “Bridewell” on Polk Street, officially the House of Correction, housed less serious offenders from within the city. The city Bridewell moved to the site of the present jail complex at 29th and California in 1871 (at the time of the Great Chicago Fire) but the county’s serious alleged offenders did not generally move there until the 1920s. When the two facilities began to be located together, they first gained the reputation as the ‘largest concentration of inmates in the free world.’ Later, the County and City jails were institutionally merged by the Illinois legislature, officially called the Cook County Department of Corrections, overseen by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. The adjacent George N. Leighton Criminal Courts Building is where the prisoners criminal matters are heard in the Circuit Court of Cook County. A rather elaborate neoclassical and art deco inspired high-rise built in the late 1920s, the courthouse was long known by just its cross-street location “26th and Cal” (26th Street and California Avenue) and has held many high-profile cases and is often seen in films and television.A live album Concert: Friday the 13th – Cook County Jail featuring performances by jazz musicians Jimmy McGriff and Lucky Thompson was released on the Groove Merchant label in 1973) As of 2017, Cook County operated the third-largest jail system in the United States by inmate population (after the Los Angeles County and New York City jail systems). At Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago (MCC Chicago) female prisoners needing to be isolated, as of 2005, have been taken to the Cook County Jail as the security housing unit (SHU) at the former is only for males.The Cook County Jail, located on 96 acres (39 hectares) in South Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois, is operated by the Sheriff of Cook County. A city jail has existed on this site since after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but major County prisoners were not generally collocated here until closure of the old Hubbard Street Criminal Court Building and jail in the late 1920s. Since then, a 1920s neoclassical and art deco courthouse for the criminal division of the Cook County Circuit Court has operated here.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office, founded in 1837, is the largest sheriff’s office in Texas and the third-largest in the nation. The HCSO has nearly 5,100 employees and 200 volunteer reservists dedicated to ensuring the safety of more than 4.1 million residents who call Harris County home. Harris County encompasses 1,788 square miles and includes 41 incorporated municipalities.

The Criminal Justice Command is the largest command in the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with nearly 2600 employees. The Command’s primary responsibility is operating the Harris County Jail System. Harris County operates the largest jail in Texas and the 3rd largest jail in the United States. The Command is comprised of 4 bureaus: Justice Housing 1200, Justice Housing 701, Justice Management and the Detention Support Services Bureau. Although independent, the bureaus work cooperatively to ensure the care custody and control of over 8700 inmates housed each day. Those individuals who departed from this facility because they were leaving ICE detention made up 44 percent of the 25 detainees housed at this facility during the last 12 months. This report focuses on the reasons these individuals left ICE detention. Sometimes this report speaks of these individuals as those “exiting” ICE detention, or simply as “exits.” The other 56 percent remained in ICE detention but were transferred from the Maverick County Jail to other facilities.

For the United States as a whole, last year the typical detainee stayed in two different ICE detention facilities before being deported or released – half stayed in 2 or fewer facilities, and half stayed in 2 or more. The average number of ICE facilities detainees moved through was 1.9. Detainees at the Maverick County Jail on average had stayed at somewhat fewer (1.0) ICE facilities.ICE records one of twenty-three reasons a detainee left ICE detention. As shown in Table 3, these reasons fall into ten general categories — from leaving because one is deported or removed, to leaving because one escaped or the individual died while in custody.During the most recent 12 month period for which data are available, a total of 11 detainees housed at the Maverick County Jail left that facility because they were deported, were released under supervision while their cases were being decided, or left ICE detention for one of a variety of other reasons. The use of this facility for the temporary housing of federal immigration detainees was arranged through an intergovernmental service agreement (IGSA) under which payments by ICE to another governmental agency are made for housing federal detainees. Additional information about the arrangement, including whether a private company may operate the facility for the government, was not available at the time this report was posted.

This report covers those who left ICE custody. It excludes individuals transferred to other ICE facilities. For more information on this facility, including individuals that were transferred, see additional TRAC reports in this series.

Information on the place of arrest was not included in the available data ICE released. However, we can examine whether the Maverick County Jail was the first ICE facility in which these detainees were held. According to ICE records, for all these detainees, the Maverick County Jail was the first place they were sent when they were detained by ICE.

We remove barriers so that inmates and their loved ones can get accurate information about correctional facilities and facilitate goods and services that can help preserve relationships while individuals are incarcerated.H.H. Coffield Unit | United States Penitentiary Beaumont | El Paso Processing Center | Federal Prison Camp Bryan | Federal Detention Center Houston | T.L. Roach Unit | Christina Melton Crain Unit | Beauford H. Jester IV Unit | Allan B. Polunsky Unit | Prarieland Detention Center

Although the county was established in 1856 it was not until September 4, 1871, that it was officially organized. New ranches were established by Mike Wipff, Frank Lehmann, Patrick Thomson, and John Towns following the organization of the county. Telegraph communication reached Eagle Pass in November of 1875 with the completion of a military line between Fort Clark and Fort Duncan. The historic Maverick County Courthouse was completed by pioneer builder William Hausser on April 4, 1885, at a cost of $20,489. The courthouse, site of the celebrated Dick Duncan murder trial in 1889, exhibits a modified Gothic architecture with high windows and an overall Spanish fortress appearance. This unique structure was declared a Texas historic landmark in September 1971. The population of the county was 1,951 in 1870 and 2,967 in 1880. In 1870 thirty-nine farms in Maverick County averaged three acres in size. By 1880 thirty farms and ranches averaged 9,418 acres; only two of the farms were over 1,000 acres, indicating that the majority of farm acreage was concentrated in one or two very large ranches. The concentration of farm and ranch lands in a few hands ended by 1890; of the ninety farms in Maverick County that year twenty-three were over 1,000 acres. By 1900 there were ninety-one farms and ranches, with twenty-three over 1,000 acres, and the average farm size reached a historic high of 36,743 acres. Ranchers raised sheep (111,240 in 1880 and 149,310 in 1890) and cattle (37,058 in 1890 and 40,083 in 1900). During the decade following the turn of the century the number of livestock plummeted; cattle numbers dropped from 40,083 in 1900 to 13,866 by 1910, and sheep fell from 149,310 to 14,070 in 1900. Cattle numbers remained low throughout the first half of the twentieth century before reaching its highest number of the century with 31,568 in 1959. In 1971, 750,000 acres in the county were devoted to ranching, and from 15,000 to 20,000 cattle were shipped each year.Eagle Pass (population, 27,479) is the county’s largest town and seat of government; other communities include Eidson Road (9,158), Rosita (2,744), and Las Quintas Fronterizas (3,463). Tourist attractions include nearby Piedras Negras, hunting and fishing and the Fort Duncan Museum in Eagle Pass.In the fifteen United States presidential elections between 1872 and 1928 Maverick County voters cast a majority vote for the Democratic candidate on seven occasions and the Republican nominee on eight occasions, including the last four elections prior to 1932. In 1932 they choose Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt over Herbert Hoover 847 to 166, beginning a succession of five decades of local victory for the Democratic nominee. In the elections between 1976 and 1992 the Democratic nominee garnered an average of 70 percent of vote. It is interesting to note that Maverick County joined an exclusive club of South Texas counties (Webb, Duval, Jim Hogg, Starr, and Zapata) as the only counties in Texas giving a majority vote to Democrat George McGovern in his unsuccessful bid against Republican Richard Nixon in 1972.The abandonment of Fort Duncan during the Civil War enabled the Indian population to gain control of the region; both American and Mexican inhabitants suffered tremendous loss of life and property. Following the war Black Seminole Scouts were organized at Fort Duncan to aid in the control of the Indians. The last Indian raid in the county occurred in 1877; the site of the gruesome mutilation of three traders, eight miles northeast of Eagle Pass, was for many years afterwards known as Deadman’s Hill. Saloons, gambling houses, and smuggling operations proliferated in and around Eagle Pass during Reconstruction. The infamous J. King Fisher and his followers dominated the town, the county, and the courts throughout this period. Maverick County judge William Stone moved his family to San Miguel for safety. Upon Stone’s death on January 23, 1880, he owned 100,000 acres of land, 30,000 head of sheep, extensive real and personal property, and was considered one of the wealthiest men in the county. After the Civil War Eagle Pass continued as a garrison town and focal point for trade with Mexico and as a center for stock raising and ranching. The main line of the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway was extended west from San Antonio around 1880, after which a 34.64-mile branch line was constructed by the Rio Grande and Pecos Railway south to Eagle Pass from Spofford in 1882. This rail line connected with the Mexican Railway in Piedras Negras and greatly enhanced the region’s international trade potential.

The community that grew up around Fort Duncan acquired the county’s first post office in 1851. Eagle Pass’s regional isolation was significantly altered with the establishment of a stage line from San Antonio in 1851. During the decade before the Civil War, the area was a haven for outlaws, slave hunters, and other disreputable people. Frederick Law Olmsted visited Eagle Pass in 1854 and noted the many slave hunters and runaway slaves residing in Piedras Negras, as well as the many saloons and gambling houses, which catered to Fort Duncan’s soldiers and other unsavory characters. In 1855 an international incident was brought about by James H. Callahan, whose pursuit of Indian raiders into Mexico ended in the looting and torching of Piedras Negras, Mexico, after an encounter with Mexican forces at La Marama on the Río Escondido.

We are a community-supported, non-profit organization and we humbly ask for your support because the careful and accurate recording of our history has never been more important. Every dollar helps.We need your support because we are a non-profit that relies upon contributions from our community in order to record and preserve the history of our state. Every dollar helps.

The earliest record of Anglo settlement in the area of Maverick County occurred in the spring of 1834, when Dr. John Charles Beales and his Dolores colonists crossed the Rio Grande near the site of present Eagle Pass and reported seeing an American hunter, his wife, and children, and a family of five Shawnee Indian beaver trappers. Although direct trade with Texas was forbidden by the Mexican government following the Texas Revolution Mexican villages near the Rio Grande continued an underground trade with San Antonio by using the Pacuache Crossing (see SAN ANTONIO CROSSING) of the Rio Grande and a smuggler’s trail immediately north of the Camino Real. This trail was used by Mexican general Adrián Woll en route to San Antonio in 1842. In the spring of 1848 Capt. John A. Veatch, in command of a company of Texas Mounted Volunteer militia, set up a camp and observation post on the Rio Grande near Paso de los Adjuntos, a ford at the junction of the Rio Escondido and the Rio Grande. Veatch referred to this location as Eagle Pass, although the original Paso del Águila (Pass of the Eagle) was located west of the Veatch site several miles upriver on the Río Escondido. On March 27, 1849, Capt. Sidney Burbank established Fort Duncan, previously known as Camp Eagle Pass, on a site two miles north of the ford at Adjuntos Pass. A steady stream of emigrants bound for the gold fields of California made their way to the fort in caravans bearing such names as the Natchez California Company, the Defiance Gold Hunters, and the Mississippi Mining and Trading Company. Henry Matson, a member of one of the California convoys, borrowed a soldier’s tent and with two kegs of liquor opened the first saloon in the area at the growing settlement by the fort locally called California Camp. San Antonio merchant James Campbell established a trading post at Eagle Pass and was soon joined by William Leslie Cazneau, who moved to the border to speculate in lands. Cazneau and San Antonio banker John Twohig, who owned much of the land in future Maverick County along the Rio Grande and who at one time leased the property of Fort Duncan to the federal government, laid out a plan of Eagle Pass in 1850. That same year a Mexican garrison was established on the opposite bank from Fort Duncan, and the village of Piedras Negras was founded.Eagle Pass Daily Guide, Jubilee Centennial Edition, July 2, 1936. Vinton Lee James, Frontier and Pioneer Recollections of Early Days in San Antonio and West Texas (San Antonio, 1938). John Hugh Knight, The History of the Maverick County Irrigation Project (M.A. thesis, Texas College of Arts and Industries, 1939). Cora Montgomery, Eagle Pass, or Life on the Border (New York: Putnam, 1852; rpt., Austin: Pemberton Press, 1966). Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas (New York, 1857; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978). Ben E. Pingenot, Historical Highlights of Eagle Pass and Maverick County (Eagle Pass, Texas: Eagle Pass Chamber of Commerce, 1971). Ben E. Pingenot, ed., Paso del Águila . . . Memoirs of Jesse Sumpter (Austin: Encino, 1969). August Santleben, A Texas Pioneer (New York and Washington: Neale, 1910). Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973).

Prior to the era of contact with European explorers and settlers, the county was periodically inhabited by bands of Coahuiltecan Indians and in earlier times by hunter gatherers, whose discarded metates, manos, and projectile points have been uncovered at former watering holes and springs throughout the county. The much-traveled Camino Real (Old San Antonio Road) crosses the Rio Grande in southern Maverick County, a part of Texas traversed by more early Spanish explorers and settlers than any other section of the state. Fernando de Azcué made a punitive expedition pursuing Indians into the county in 1665. In 1675 the Bosque-Larios expedition entered the county near the site of present Quemado. It is believed that the first Mass ever celebrated on what is presently Texas soil was held by Franciscan members of the Bosque-Larios expedition on May 15, 1675, at a place they called San Isidro. In 1688 Alonso De León followed the Camino Real across the area of the county en route to La Salle’s Texas Expedition. Expeditions under Domingo Terán de los Ríos in 1691, Martín de Alarcón in 1718, the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo in 1720, and Pedro de Rivera y Villalón in 1727 crossed the area. Local tradition suggests that a French trading post was established near Frenchman Springs northeast of the site of Quemado in the 1720s; this post may have been connected with the expedition of Domingo Ramón and Louis Juchereau de St. Denis to the area around 1714–17. The Canary Islanders got their first impression of their new country in the area of present Maverick County in 1730. In 1766 Diego Ortiz Parrilla set off across the area on his way to the Texas Gulf Coast. Samuel A. Maverick, a captive of Mexican troops on his way to Perote Prison, and Cherokee Indian leader Sequoyah, en route to San Fernando de las Rosas, crossed the Rio Grande in Maverick County in the early 1800s.

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.In 2014 the U.S. Census counted 57,023 people living in Maverick County. About 95.1 percent were Hispanic and 3.2 percent were Anglo; other ethnic groups accounted for less than 2 percent of the county’s population. Of residents twenty-five years and older, 42 percent had graduated from high school, and 9 percent had college degrees. In the early twenty-first century, petroleum production, agriculture, and tourism were central elements of the local economy. In 2002 the county had 214 farms and ranches covering 476,245 acres, 90 percent of which were devoted to pasture and 9 percent to crops. That year farmers and ranchers in the area earned $34,720,000; livestock sales accounted for $30,556,000 of the total. Cattle feeding, goats, sheep, pecans, vegetables, sorghum and wheat were the chief agricultural products. More than 1,047,000 barrels of oil, and 57,982,007 thousand cubic feet of gas well gas, were produced in the county in 2004; by the end of that year 51,298,601 barrels of oil had been taken from county lands since 1929.

Frontier educational facilities were slow in coming to Maverick County residents. St. Joseph’s Academy, a private school for girls, opened in 1883 and was perhaps the first school established in the county. In 1900 there were four rural community schools in the county: at Upson, Quemado, Coal Mines, and Towns. In 1950 only 5 percent of all adults in the county had completed a high school education; in 1960 the percentage had risen to 9 percent and by 1980 more substantially to 32.2 percent. In 1982 the county consisted of one school district with eight elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and one special-education facility. Private schools that year consisted of three elementary schools and one high school with 554 students. The earliest record of Protestant Episcopal services in the county were those conducted by officers and chaplains at Fort Duncan. Aside from this and the sporadic efforts of an occasional circuit rider, the first quarter century of the county’s existence saw little other Protestant religious activity. An Episcopal church was built in Eagle Pass in 1887; it was the first Protestant church in Eagle Pass and was preceded only by Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church, established at Eagle Pass in 1852. In 1982 twenty-one churches had an estimated combined membership of 16,446, the largest of which was Catholic. The population of the county climbed slowly but steadily during the twentieth century from 4,066 in 1900 to 18,093 in 1970 and jumped rapidly to 31,938 in 1980. Much of the increase was a growing influx of residents from Mexico lured by jobs in Eagle Pass. Maverick County reportedly had the largest increase in its population (24 percent) during the period 1960–65 than any other United States county. In 1982 Maverick County ranked fourth among all counties in the United States in percentage of persons of Spanish origin. With a median age of twenty-two, the population was the youngest in Texas. The largest ancestry groups in the county were persons of Hispanic descent (90 percent), English descent (3 percent), and Irish descent (2 percent).

We also provide photos of the jail that we have collected over the years, and a database of most wanted criminals for Maverick County, neighboring counties and the state of Texas.

Maverick County Detention Facility offers NCIC tablets to rent to inmates that they can use for video visitation and calls, phone calls, instant messaging, education and entertainment.