a group of migrants placemats against the bars from his cell in a northern detention center Mexico and set it on fire. The guards see this and walk away without trying to free or help the men.. Before long, smoke fills the entire room and video from the surveillance camera he cutTO.
In the early hours of this Tuesday it was learned that a voracious fire caused the deaths of at least 40 people in an immigration detention center a Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Hours later, local media released a video showing how the detainees remained locked up in their cells. as the flames progressed.
After the fire broke out on Monday night, there were fires rows of corpses covered in foil blankets outside the immigration facilities located on the south bank of the Rio Grande across from El Paso, Texas, at one of the busiest intersections Of people trying to cross the border into the United States and asylum seekers.
Others 29 migrants were injured and were transferred “to state delicate or seriousand to four city hospitals for immediate attention,” the National Migration Institute (INM) said in a statement.
The fire broke out in a sleeping area. where 68 men were housed, according to the INM. The Immigration Agency condemned the facts which caused the fire but did not explain how he acted in the event of an emergency or whether or not an attempt was made to evacuate the aliens.
In the video, two people in uniform rush in into the camera frame and at least one migrant appears next to the metal door behind bars. None of the officers approach the cells to open them but they flee as everything fills with smoke.
The Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, in an interview with Mexican journalist Joaquín López Dóriga cconfirmed the authenticity of the recording and said they had known him since Tuesday morning.
This was confirmed by the Foreign Minister of Guatemala, Mario Búcaro 28 of the deceased were Guatemalans and said he has the support of the Mexican authorities “to find out the truth” and “to find those responsible”.
While the governments of Colombia and Ecuador They also confirmed the death of one person from each of these countries.
The Mexican prosecutor’s office added that they were also in the damaged structures 13 Hondurans and 12 Salvadorans, whose status was not specified. One wounded man refused to be identified.
In the afternoon, the migration agency indicated that it had provided assistance to 15 women adult migrants who have been evicted from the facilities.
Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obradorhe said it was a unfortunate accident and that the migrants, who apparently wanted to avoid their transfer or deportation, “didn’t imagine that this would cause this terrible misfortune”.
The federal attorney’s office already has open an investigationthe National Human Rights Commission, an official body, is assisting migrants, and the INM has announced this will give humanitarian visas to those affectedwhich guarantees them hospital care, and which will cover the funeral expenses of the deceased.
In parallel began the identification work of the deceased with the consular authorities of various countries.
Like the morgue of this violent city I was already at my limit capacity before the fire, the government had to refrigerated trailer rental to protect the bodies of the migrants, Chihuahua state attorney César Jáuregui told the press.
Migrants in Ciudad Juárez: the voices of the victims
At a nearby hospital, the Venezuelan Viangly Infante Padrón, 31 and traveling with her three children, was expecting her husband, who was being treated for smoke inhalation. The night before, I was outside the detention center waiting that her husband was released when the fire broke out.
“There was smoke everywhere. They let out the women and the immigration workers,” she explained. “The men were never removed until the fire department arrived.”
She said seen several dead before finding her husband in an ambulance. “I was desperate because I saw a corpse, a body, a corpseAnd I haven’t seen it anywhere.”
Shortly before, a hundred Venezuelan migrants gathered on the spot asking for information from relatives and asking for justice for what happened.
“They don’t want to deal with us… We want to know whether he is alive or dead“, complained the Venezuelan Katiuska Márquez, 23 years old and with two small children without being able to understand how the guards of the center were alive and the migrants were not. “How could they not let them out?“
marchez I was looking for news of a half-brother, Orlando Mandonado, 26, with whom he was traveling. the rented family a room where ten people lived They paid with the money they received while begging on the street. They were all arrested on Monday shortly after noon along with about twenty people, including children.
“I was at the traffic light with a cardboard asking for what I needed for my children and people supported me with food,” explained the woman who has been in Ciudad Juárez for ten days waiting for an appointment to seek asylum in the United States. Suddenly the officers arrived. “Migration grabbed me by the jacket until they put me in a van with my brother and several other families.”
According to what he said, everyone entered the facilities but the women and children were kept out of the cells and were released a few hours later.
Increase in the number of migrants trying to reach the United States
Tensions between authorities and migrants have increased this month in Ciudad Juárez, where the shelters are located filled with people hoping to seek asylum in the United States. Just over two weeks ago, a group of mostly Venezuelans emboldened by false rumors that they could pass freely tried to cross the border bridge and was blocked by US authorities.
Subsequently, the mayor of Juárez, Cruz Pérez Cuellar, started a information campaignthe migrants that there was room in the shelters and that there was no need for them to beg on the streets. Furthermore, he urged the residents don’t give them money and said authorities would remove them from intersections where begging was dangerous and reportedly a nuisance to residents.
Unlike Central Americans, who are being held for deportation, it is not normal for Mexico to repatriate Venezuelans, even if it does move them to the country’s central and southern states.
The Network of Migrant Homes and Human Rights Centers in the northern area of Mexico, which he had already denounced the increase in operations immigration sets and municipal authorities e arbitrary arrests in early March in a letter signed by more than 30 humanitarian organizations, they said in a statement on Tuesday that the event “reflects the absence of protocols for the protection of migrants and asylum seekers.
They held the authorities responsible for what happened due to lack of action and indicated that it is a “narrow and unventilated” space. Where there was no drinking water no medical assistance and people have been cut off and misinformed.
“could be seen coming”, they condemned in the statement. “Mexico’s Immigration Policy Kills”.
From United Nations an exhaustive investigation of the facts was requested and Felipe González Morales, special rapporteur for the human rights of migrants, recalled that international law establishes that “the detention of migrants must be an exceptional and not a general measure”.
The facilities that the Mexican immigration authorities have throughout the country have repeatedly come under criticism for being overcrowded and protests and riots. The last ones took place at the end of 2022 in Tijuana (North) and Tapachula (at the southern border).
Mexico has become the third most popular destination in the world for asylum seekers, after the United States and Germany. But it’s still a lot to transit country to the north neighbor. Tens of thousands are stranded in the south of the country or in border towns in the north waiting for their trials to proceed or for an opportunity to cross.
In a mass celebrated in memory of migrants, Msgr. José Guadalupe Torres Campos expressed the sick of so much deaththat generated by daily violence and now against migrants.
“The scream, everyone’s cry is enough“, he said. “Enough of so much pain, enough of so much death.”
DS
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.