Inmates in all US federal prisons have been confined to their cells as a precaution after a deadly fight broke out at a Texas penitentiary.
The incident happened at about 11.30am on Monday at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
“Four inmates were transported to a local hospital. Two of these inmates succumbed to their injuries and were pronounced deceased,” said a Federal Bureau of Prisons representative in an email to AFP.
A press release stated that no other staff members or inmates were injured at the detention facility, which houses more than 1,300 prisoners.
The AFP reported on Monday that the altercation involved members of the MS-13 street gang.
Fights in America's prisons are not rare, but normally result in only localised responses, such as confining inmates to their cells or suspending visits to individual facilities where violence has broken out.
In this instance, media reports said that the fight involved members of rival gangs who are active in several prisons, leading authorities to believe that retaliations could take place more broadly.
The attack is the latest example of serious violence for the beleaguered Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The agency has struggled through a multitude of crises in recent years, including widespread staffing shortages, serious employee misconduct, a series of escapes and deaths.
The lockdown, instituted at more than 120 federal prisons across the US, was prompted by fears that violence could spread to other centres.
During a nationwide lockdown, inmates are kept in their cells most of the day and visits are cancelled. Because of a surge in coronavirus cases, social visits at almost every prison have been cancelled already.
The agency went into lockdown in April 2020 as coronavirus cases began rising in prisons nationwide, again after the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and shortly before the inauguration of President Joe Biden that same month.
On Monday, the bureau said officers at the Texas prison saw inmates fighting and responded to secure the area.
Two prisoners, Andrew Pineda and Guillermo Riojas, were pronounced dead at a local hospital after the attack. Another two prisoners were injured and taken to nearby hospitals for treatment.
There have been serious security issues within the federal prison system in the past few months, including several inmates' deaths and stabbings.
The Justice Department announced this month that the agency’s director, Michael Carvajal, was resigning from his position amid increased scrutiny over his leadership and after reports of widespread corruption, misconduct and other problems.
Federal prisons house only a small part of America's incarcerated population: about 150,000 inmates out of more than two million *in total. The rest are in prisons run by individual states.
In 2019, an official tally showed that there had been 11 homicides in the federal prison system and 143 at state-run sites.
Agencies contributed to this report
