Zavala County, Texas — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byNot found — the county site names no operator
County publishes a jail nameNo — the only reference is a generic 'County Jail' phone entry in the county directory; no facility name is published
Jail phone830-374-3105 (listed as 'County Jail' in the county directory)
Jail addressNot found
Inmate depositshttps://deposits.jailatm.com/WebDeposits/ — third-party JailATM deposit link, no rates published
What was triedhttps://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/Sheriff (no jail text or links at all) ; https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/Zavala%20County%20Directory ; https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/contact ; https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/homepage ; https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/Departments and /page/sitemap both return HTTP 500
Beds and population, 2026-0844 people held in 66 rated beds

Source: Zavala County — Directory · checked 2026-08-22

Transparency rating

1/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✓What it costs taxpayers
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗PREA audits — not published
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Zavala County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-22. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Eusevio Salinas

OfficeZavala County Sheriff's Office
AddressZavala County Courthouse, 200 E. Uvalde Street, Crystal City, TX 78839
Phone830-374-3615 / 830-374-3105
Fax830-448-3146
Administrative AssistantIsela Picazo

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Zavala County — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

No County Court at Law is listed on the county site. Two district courts serve Zavala County, the 293rd and the 365th, each with its own page.

County Judge

Jesse Gonzales

293rd District Court

Maribel Flores

365th District Court

Amado J. Abascal III

Justices of the Peace

Paula M. Deleon — Precinct 1/1A
Rosie E. Briseno — Precinct 2
Mike Amoles — Precinct 3
Susie Bermea — Precinct 4/4A

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-22

The County Commissioners

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Zavala County's Sheriff page contains no reference to the jail, inmates, bond, visitation, commissary or phone rates. This is the thinnest jail disclosure of the four counties in this group.
Budget marked yes on the published adopted county budget (2025-26: https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/open/811/0/Zavala%20County%20Approved%20Budget%2025-26.pdf, with a proposed 2026-27 also posted). That PDF returned no machine-readable text, so a distinct jail line item could not be confirmed by opening it.
Parts of the site are broken: /page/Departments, /page/sitemap, /page/District%20Courts all return HTTP 500. Judge names for the 293rd and 365th were taken from the individual court pages, which do load.
The county directory page renders the County Judge entry alongside staff names (Noelia Ramirez, administrative assistant; Janey Cervantez, clerk). The County Judge page itself gives the judge as Jesse Gonzales.
Agendas (https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/County%20Agendas) and minutes (https://www.co.zavala.tx.us/page/Minutes) are both posted as dated PDFs.
No county-specific TCJS inspection report could be located; Zavala is not on the current TCJS non-compliant list.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Joe Cruz, Precinct 2 Raul Gomez, Precinct 3 Mark Belmarez, Precinct 4 Florencio Melendrez.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

1 people have died in the Zavala County jail since 2021.

0 by suicide

1 illness or medical

1 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them1 of 1

Most recent death on the state's record2021-03-02

People held, 2026-0844 in 66 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them88.6%

Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Zavala County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.

Names verified 2026-08-22 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered