At least 39 migrants died and 29 others were injured early Tuesday morning in the fire at their detention center in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city bordering the United States, a tragedy caused according to the Mexican government by migrants who feared a expulsion.
“They put mattresses at the door of the reception center and set them on fire, without imagining that this would cause this terrible misfortune,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador lamented during his daily press conference.
“It is a protest movement that they started, we assume that they learned that they were going to be expelled, moved”, he underlined.
Although the identities and nationalities of the victims have not yet been released, he said the center received “mainly migrants from Central America and some from Venezuela”.
While deploring the tragedy, he confirmed the death toll of 39 migrants announced by the National Institute for Migration (INM), which manages the center.
The Institute “deplores the death of 39 migrant people so far following a fire,” he said in a statement, adding that the 29 injured had been taken in serious condition to four hospitals.
He said he had established contacts “with the consular authorities of the various countries to implement the actions authorized by the complete identification of deceased migrants”.
-“They don’t tell you anything!”-
The fire, unprecedented in facilities for migrants in the country, began shortly before midnight Monday, prompting the mobilization in the early morning Tuesday of firefighters and dozens of ambulances. It started in the area where undocumented foreigners are housed.
An AFP journalist was able to see employees of the forensic service placing corpses in the parking lot of the center before they were taken away for identification.
The site was guarded by soldiers and the national guard.
Many migrants had been transferred to this center in recent days after a campaign by local authorities against street vendors, many of whom are foreigners.
A rescuer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to lack of permission, said about 70 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, were at the site.
Viangly, a Venezuelan, screams in despair outside the center where her 27-year-old husband was taken after his arrest in a roundup when, she claims, he has Mexican papers. “They took him in an ambulance,” she said. She doesn’t know anything about her condition and complains that those in charge of the center “don’t tell you anything”.
Ciudad Juarez, neighboring El Paso (Texas), is one of the border towns from which many undocumented migrants seek to reach the United States to seek asylum there.
Since 2014, around 7,661 migrants have died or gone missing en route to the United States, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
On March 13, hundreds of weary migrants, mostly Venezuelans, attempted to cross the border but were barred from crossing by US agents.
On June 27, 56 migrants were found asphyxiated in an abandoned trailer near San Antonio, Texas.
US President Joe Biden took new restrictive measures in February on the right to asylum for migrants who have crossed the border with Mexico, forcing them to apply in transit countries or online.
The measures also provide for more frequent recourse by the United States to immediate expulsions, accompanied by a ban on new entry into the territory for five years.
Some 200,000 people try to cross the border between Mexico and the United States each month. Migrants, anxious to escape poverty or violence in their countries of origin, often take enormous risks to enter American soil.
03/28/2023 16:32:14 – Ciudad Juárez (Mexique) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP