Frustration for California prison officials after an inmate who allegedly escaped and was captured in Mexico is on the loose again.
Miguel Banuelos, 49, was reported missing on July 4 at the Washington Ridge Conservation Camp near Lake Tahoe. Prison staff did not see him at a scheduled headcount about an hour-and-a-half after he was last seen, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation searched the camp and the nearby area but could not find Banuelos.
Mexican officials discovered him two days later at a home hundreds of miles away in Tijuana. They apprehended him, and he was expected to appear before an immigration judge and be returned to a California CDCR institution, but instead, he was released by a Mexican magistrate on July 10.
Correctional officials, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office, and others are looking for Banuelos as of Friday. He has an active arrest warrant.
He was sentenced on drug charges, including transportation or sale of a controlled substance and possession or purchase of heroin/cocaine exceeding four kilograms, and was scheduled to be released on April 20, 2028.
Officials from San Diego County transferred him to the Washington Ridge Conservation Camp, a low-level correctional fire camp, on July 23, 2025.
The CDCR said 99% of the people who have escaped or walked away from an adult institution, camp, in-state contract bed, or community-based program placement have been apprehended.
California prison officials urge the public to contact 911 or the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office if they have any information about Banuelos. Anyone with information may also contact OCS Special Agent Tim Keeney at (916) 210-9159, they wrote.
Washington Ridge Conservation Camp is part of California’s Conservation Fire Camp Program, which offers training to minimum-security prisoners on how to fight fires and support the government in responses against floods and other natural disasters.
