Mexico’s President on Wednesday assured there would be “no impunity” after the fire that killed 38 people at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juarez, in northern Mexico, on the border with the United States.
Locally, dozens of people are anxiously awaiting news from loved ones, an AFP journalist noted.
“We will not hide anything and there will be no impunity,” assured President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador when he announced in the afternoon that the authorities would submit a first report on the fire, which also injured 28 people.
He demanded that “those who caused this painful tragedy be punished in accordance with the law”.
In a video broadcast by several media outlets, including AFP, showing the outbreak of the fire during the night from Monday to Tuesday, we can see a man behind bars in the smoke kicking a closed door while another appears to be lying on a mattress on the floor. They then withdraw with other people.
In the foreground, on the other side of the cell, three officers, two of them in uniform, withdraw from the picture with their backs to them without offering any assistance.
The Mexican president initially estimated that the migrants had lit the fire with mattresses in a “protest movement”.
“We assume that they have learned that they will be expelled, that they will be transferred,” he said on Tuesday, a few hours after the tragedy, which has never been seen in migrant facilities in Mexico.
“Our government does not allow violations of human rights or impunity,” he insisted on Wednesday, appearing to change his mind under the impact of the video. “We will act responsibly,” he added, promising sanctions.
“How is it possible that the Mexican authorities left people locked up with no means of escaping the fire?” asked Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s director for the Americas, in a press release on Tuesday.
“We pray for the migrants who lost their lives in the tragic fire in Ciudad Juárez yesterday,” Pope Francis said.
Authorities had not announced the identity and number of deaths by nationality as of Wednesday. No information was given on the condition of the injured person.
Guatemala said 28 of its nationals died in the disaster.
Mexican authorities also spoke of Hondurans, Venezuelans and Salvadorans among the victims.
Dozens of migrants spent the night in front of the National Institute for Migration (INM) facilities where the fire broke out.
“We want to know if they were inside or not,” Venezuelan Gilbert Zabaleta told AFP, looking for two friends.
The fire broke out shortly before midnight Monday night at a center that Chihuahua State Governor Maria Eugenia Campos said was a detention center and testimonies from migrants.
After the tragedy, the United Nations pushed for “safer” migration routes to the United States, and the American ambassador to Mexico insisted on “fixing a broken migration system” with its partners in the region.
Ciudad Juarez, adjacent to El Paso, Texas, is one of the border cities from which many undocumented migrants attempt to cross to the United States after a long journey to seek asylum.
Around 7,661 migrants have died or disappeared en route to US territory since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
US President Joe Biden introduced new restrictive measures in February, forcing migrants to apply in transit countries or online.
The measures also stipulate that the United States will make more frequent use of immediate expulsions, accompanied by a five-year ban on re-entry into its territory.
About 200,000 people attempt to cross the border between Mexico and its northern neighbor each month. Migrants say they are fleeing poverty or violence in their countries of origin.