The blaze – one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country – occurred late Monday at a facility in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Images from the scene showed ambulances, firefighters and vans from the morgue around the smoke-covered facility with rows of bodies lying under shimmery silver sheets.
At least 39 people died in the fire. Twenty-nine injured people were taken to hospitals, said Mexico’s National Immigration Institute in a statement. The facility was holding 68 adult men from Central and South America, it said.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office launched an inquiry and has investigators at the scene, according to media reports.
Vinagly, a Venezuelan woman, stood outside the immigration centre, desperate for information about her 27-year-old husband detained there.
“He was taken away in an ambulance,” she told AFP news agency. “They [immigration officials] don’t tell you anything. A family member can die and they don’t tell you he’s dead.”The national immigration agency said it “energetically rejects the actions that led to this tragedy” without any further explanation of what those actions might have been.
Tensions between authorities and migrants had apparently been running high in recent weeks in Ciudad Juarez, where shelters are full of people waiting for opportunities to cross into the US or who have requested asylum there and are waiting out the process.
Mostly Venezuelan migrants rioted inside an immigration centre in Tijuana in October that had to be controlled by police and National Guard troops. In November, dozens of migrants rioted in Mexico’s largest detention facility in the southern city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala. No one died in either incident.
More than 30 migrant shelters and other advocacy organisations published an open letter March 9 that complained of a criminalisation of migrants and asylum seekers in the city. It accused authorities of abuse and using excessive force in rounding up migrants, complaining municipal police were questioning people in the street about their immigration status without cause.
Mexican authorities and firefighters remove injured migrants, mostly Venezuelans, from inside the National Migration Institute (INM) building during a fire, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico March 27, 2023
Mexican authorities and firefighters remove injured people, mostly Venezuelans, from inside the National Migration Institute building during the fire in Ciudad Juarez [Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters]
The US administration of President Joe Biden has been hoping to stem the record tide of people undertaking often dangerous journeys organised by human smugglers to get to the US.
In February, Biden proposed new restrictions on asylum seekers, hoping to stifle the rush of people to the southern border when COVID-related controls are lifted.
The new rules say those who arrive at the border and simply cross into the United States will no longer be eligible for asylum. Instead, they must apply first for asylum in one of the countries they pass through to get to the US border, or apply online via a US government app.
About 200,000 people try to cross the border from Mexico to the US each month. Most are from Central and South America, and cite poverty and violence back home in requesting asylum.
A recent report by the International Organization for Migration said since 2014 about 7,661 people have died or disappeared en route to the US, while 988 perished in accidents or while travelling in subhuman conditions.
