Three female inmates who were originally thought to have escaped from a northern Mexico border jail on Monday were found by officials in the visiting area of the prison. However, police are still on the lookout for 129 inmates who left the Piedras Negras facility on Tuesday.

Mexican troops and Federal police units, which include an elite military special forces unit, are searching for the fugitives who were said to have headed across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

The breakout, which involved roughly 20% of the jail's population, took place through a tunnel that was 21 feet long and 4 feet in diameter.

According to the Milenio TV station, Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos stated that the tunnel "was not made today. It had been there for months."

The route reportedly allowed 80 prisoners who were in the middle of prison sentences for federal crimes to escape. Two employees and the director of the state prison are now under investigation.

President Felipe Calderon took to Twitter on Tuesday calling the prison break "deplorable" and saying that "the vulnerability of state law enforcement institutions must be corrected."

In past escapes, guard loyalties to inmates have played a role in several Mexican jailbreaks. The Feds are now pulling for all law enforcement officials to submit to background and anti-drug checks. However, state officials have not been helping the matter, as only 180,000 out of the country's 430,000 city and state police have been checked thus far. However, state officials are saying that their extremely low-security jails are forced to hold uncontrollable and dangerous inmates

The last notable prison break in the area had occurred in December of 2010, when 153 prisoners escaped from Nuevo Laredo, Texas. In the respective case, 41 of the guards where charged with assisting the convicts during the break out.

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