A Texas Ranger has charged a former Starr County Juvenile Justice Center guard with faking safety checks. The checks were faked on the night a teen died in his cell. Bladimir Alaniz worked as a juvenile supervision officer at the lockup. Court papers say he wrote down cell checks that he never made.
The charge comes almost two years after the death. A teenage boy held at the Starr County Juvenile Justice Center was found hanging in his cell on October 20, 2024. His name has not been made public because he was a minor. Starr County Sheriff's Office Investigator Rafael Aguirre said the SCJJC called about a male juvenile who appeared to have hanged himself in his cell. Texas Ranger Jose Cedillo then took over the custodial death investigation. The new charge does not accuse Alaniz of causing the teen's death. It accuses him of lying on paper about checking on kids in their cells that night. Alaniz is charged, not convicted, and the case is still open in Starr County court.
According to the criminal complaint, Alaniz is charged with tampering with a governmental record. That is a Class A misdemeanor. It can mean up to a year in county jail. Texas Ranger Jose Cedillo signed the complaint and swore to the facts in it.
The complaint says Alaniz made a false entry in a Starr County Juvenile Justice Center observation log. He logged checks on kids in their cells that were never done, according to the complaint. The document does not accuse him of hurting the teen. It accuses him of falsifying the paper trail.
Ranger Cedillo pulled video from the jail that covered October 19 and October 20, 2024. SCJJC Chief Dora Lisa Saenz gave him the footage, the complaint says. That video became the core evidence in the case.
The footage shows another guard, Prisma Barrera, grabbed the check log for cell C10 around 7:43 p.m. on October 19. She walked into the control room and started filling it out. The complaint says she never looked inside the cell first. She then used that same log as a guide. She filled out logs for cells C6, C8, and R1, again without looking inside. About eleven minutes later, she used the log again for four more cells. Those were B2, L2, C1, and C2.
Alaniz took over just after midnight on October 20, according to the complaint. He grabbed the observation logs from the control room and sat down at a table in the dayroom. He filled out the logs without looking inside the cells, the complaint says. Between 12:08 a.m. and 6:36 a.m., he only checked cells three times. Those checks came at 1:05 a.m., 2:06 a.m., and 3:46 a.m., according to the complaint.
State rules say guards must check on kids in juvenile lockups at random times. The gap between checks cannot pass 15 minutes. The complaint says Alaniz and Barrera skipped that rule for hours. Instead, they wrote fake times in the log.
Juvenile jails like SCJJC are supposed to keep a close watch on the kids locked inside. Those checks exist to catch a kid in danger before it is too late. When a guard skips the check and fakes the paperwork, no one truly knows what is happening inside a cell. Families and the courts are left trusting a piece of paper that may not be true.
The teen's death was investigated as a custodial death. That means he died while the state had custody of him and was responsible for his safety. Texas law calls for extra review any time someone dies while locked up. That person could not leave or call for outside help on his own. That review is what brought Ranger Cedillo to the SCJJC video.
A Starr County magistrate found probable cause to arrest and hold Alaniz on the tampering charge. Court records show the commitment order was received and filed in late June 2026, almost two years after the teen died. A warrant for his arrest was also issued in the case. Alaniz has not been convicted, and the case is still moving through the Starr County court system.
It is not clear if Barrera, the other guard named in the complaint, faces any charge of her own. That is not in the records El Tejano obtained. El Tejano is asking Starr County officials for more records on the SCJJC custodial death case. We want to know if any other staff members are under review. This story will be updated as new documents come in through the Texas Public Information Act.
