WASHINGTON — A bipartisan bill to crack down on contraband cellphones in federal prisons is awaiting House action. It honors a lieutenant killed in a 2013 ambush orchestrated from behind bars.
More than 13 years after Lt. Osvaldo Albarati was killed in an ambush coordinated from inside a federal prison, his widow, Helen Andujar Albarati, is urging the Justice Department to help move the legislation forward.
In an Aug. 3 letter to Todd Blanche, who was serving as acting attorney general at the time, Helen called for the immediate passage of the Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Stopping Prison Contraband Act.
“My husband had been seizing illegal phones because inmates were using them to run drug gangs and direct criminal enterprises from behind bars,” she wrote. “The order to kill him came from inside Guaynabo itself, placed by an inmate using one of those phones.”
The bipartisan legislation, S. 736, would increase the maximum prison sentence from one year to two years for anyone convicted of smuggling or otherwise illegally providing a cellphone to a federal inmate, making the offense a felony. The Senate-passed text would not increase the existing penalty for an inmate who possesses a contraband phone, according to the bill and a Congressional Budget Office analysis.
The measure would also require the BOP director to review the agency’s policies governing inmates who make, possess or obtain prohibited items and update those policies as needed to better protect staff and incarcerated people.
The Senate passed the bill without amendment by voice vote on June 10. It was received in the House and held at the desk on June 15.
Albarati, 39, was driving home from a shift at Metropolitan Detention Center Guaynabo in Puerto Rico on Feb. 26, 2013, when gunmen followed his vehicle and shot him to death on an expressway.
He had worked for the BOP for nearly 11 years and was assigned to the prison’s Special Investigations Section, where he regularly searched for contraband. He was named the facility’s Correctional Officer of the Year in 2011 and promoted to lieutenant the following year.
Federal prosecutors said inmates angered by Albarati’s contraband seizures plotted to have him killed. Witnesses testified that an inmate watched Albarati leave the prison and signaled to others who communicated with the hired gunmen using a contraband cellphone, according to the Justice Department.
Oscar Martínez-Hernández, identified by prosecutors as a leader of the plot, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2019. Eight other men pleaded guilty and received sentences ranging from 10 years to 33 years.
In her letter, Helen told Blanche that contraband cellphones continue to allow inmates to direct drug trafficking, extortion, violence and other crimes beyond prison walls.
“Being an inmate is only a minor inconvenience for criminals who continue to traffic drugs, order violence, run extortion schemes and arrange attacks on people outside, including the officers sworn to protect the public,” she wrote. “Every active contraband phone is a weapon.”
Jon Zumkehr, an advocate who worked with Helen on the legislation, said the devices pose a direct threat to correctional staff and the public.
“Contraband cellphones aren’t harmless. They’re weapons,” Zumkehr said. “These devices are used to plan violence, commit fraud and, in the most tragic case, orchestrate the killing of Lieutenant Albarati himself.”
Helen also asked the Justice Department to work with the Federal Communications Commission to support targeted cellphone-jamming technology in federal correctional facilities. The legislation itself does not authorize or require the use of jamming technology.
She closed the letter by urging federal officials not to wait for another officer to be killed: “Please do not wait until another family receives the same devastating news we received. Please do not wait until another officer pays with his or her life for our failure to act. My husband’s sacrifice, and the ongoing pain carried by our family, must finally count for something.”
