At least 39 people were killed on Monday night and 29 others seriously injured when a fire broke out at a government-run migrant detention center in northern Mexico, near the U.S. border, Mexican authorities said.
The fatal blaze comes as border cities across Mexico have been flooded with migrants turned back from the United States and more arriving from other countries, with many hoping to cross after a pandemic-era public health rule expires in May.
The fire broke out in a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city across from El Paso, Texas, shortly before 10 p.m., according to a statement by the Mexican government.
Sixty-eight men from Central and South America were being detained there, the statement said, adding that the 29 injured men were in serious condition and had been transported to local hospitals for urgent care.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said the men held at the facility had been angry at the authorities.
“As protest, at the door of the shelter, they put mattresses and set them on fire, and they did not imagine that this was going to cause this terrible tragedy,” said Mr. López Obrador, during his regular daily news conference on Tuesday morning.
“We assume it was because they found out they were going to be deported,” he added.
Migrants are sleeping in churches, hotels and sometimes on the street. To survive, many have taken to selling candies, cleaning windshields and begging for change.
On the morning of March 12, hundreds of people — including women and children — rushed to the border and gathered at a bridge that connects the city with El Paso, according to local media reports.
The migrants begged to cross into the United States, but were turned back by law enforcement officers.
In a video recorded by La Verdad, a local media outlet, a woman carrying a small child on her shoulders started shouting, “We just want to pass! Please help us! Enough is enough, we are tired of being here in Juárez! Migration does not leave us alone! It takes away what little we have! Help us!”
The next day, the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, announced that his government would toughen its approach to migrants stranded in the city.
“The truth is that our patience is running out,” he said at a news conference, according to local media outlets. “We have the obligation of taking care of the city.”
Human rights groups signed a joint letter this month denouncing what they said were abuses by Mexican migration officials and “the criminalization of migrants.” The letter said that migrants’ documents were destroyed in a raid on a local hotel on March 8 carried out by units from the police, the national guard and the Mexican military.
“With the excessive presence, a clear message of intimidation is sent to the people,” read the statement.
The migrants killed in Monday night’s fire were mainly from Central America and Venezuela, Mr. López Obrador said. At least 28 of the victims were from Guatemala, according to the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry.
The Mexican authorities are conducting an investigation into who was responsible for the tragedy in order to determine whether to bring criminal charges against any officials, and working with consulates in the migrants’ countries of origin to determine their identity and repatriate the bodies, according to a senior Mexican official not authorized to speak publicly.
Television footage showed a swarm of police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the area. What appeared to be a number of bodies wrapped in large foil blankets could be seen in the facility’s parking lot, and people outside clung to the perimeter fence as emergency responders tended to the victims.
Some of the victims bodies were covered in soot.
The institute said that it had begun communicating “with consular authorities from different countries” in order to identify the dead.
In the hours before the disaster, several news outlets said that personnel from the detention center had been rounding up migrants in the city who were begging or selling merchandise on the street, and that there had been tensions between detained migrants and the staff.
In December, the United States Supreme Court said that a pandemic-era health measure that restricted migration at the southern border would remain in place for the time being. That measure, known as Title 42, has allowed migrants who might otherwise qualify for asylum to be swiftly expelled at the border.
The court’s ruling delayed the potential for a large increase in unlawful crossings into the United States from Mexico. But the measure is scheduled to expire in early May.
Reporting was contributed by Maria Abi-Habib, José Bautista, Jody García, Rocío Gallegos, Mike Ives and Euan Ward.
