At least 39 people died in a fire at the facilities of the National Institute for Migration in Ciudad Juárez (northeast Mexico) on Monday evening, the National Institute for Migration (INM) confirmed in a press release. The victims are migrants, mostly from Central America and Venezuela, who were being held at the federal center’s facilities. They were arrested the same day in the city bordering the United States and were believed to be in locked rooms, a Chihuahua state government source told EL PAÍS. The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has attributed the incident to the migrants burning mats in protest when they believed they were being deported. According to the INM, there are at least another 29 injured in a “mild-serious” condition who have been transferred to four hospitals in the region.
This Monday, agents from the National Migration Institute arrested more than 70 people in Ciudad Juárez over alleged riots on public roads. They were later installed in several cells on the left side of the building owned by the federal government. The fire broke out around 9:30 p.m. López Obrador said in his conference this Tuesday that the migrants “found out they were going to be deported”: “In protest, they put mats on the door of the shelter and set them on fire. They did not suspect that this would cause this terrible misfortune.
According to the state government, the fire started in the men’s area and spread from there. All fatalities are men: 37 died on the spot and two others perished in the General Hospital. 15 women “without injuries” were also evacuated from the immigration building, according to the Chihuahuan Executive. “There are a total of 83 migrants and seven evacuated staff,” he said in a statement.
The first images this Tuesday morning showed dozens of bodies piled on the edge of the building, which is located on the Stanton-Lerdo International Bridge. Both the fire department and the National Guard were there to tend to the victims. The public prosecutor’s office took over the investigation.
migration pressure
Ciudad Juárez has become a pressure cooker with the arrival of numerous groups of migrants trying to cross the north or seeking asylum in Mexico in the meantime. The region is experiencing a record migration flow, with 2.76 million people arrested at the US-Mexico border in 2022. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the flow of migrants into Mexican territory increased by 8%. Last December, every immigration record was shattered: US border officials arrested 251,487 people, an average of more than 8,000 people a day. In the same month, but in 2019, it was just 40,000.
Of those detainees, according to the Customs and Border Control Office (CBP), 202,000 were given what is known as Title 8, allowing them to be deported to their countries of origin, and the remainder, nearly 50,000, were sent to Mexico under the controversial Title 42. That old policy , revived by Donald Trump, allows foreign nationals, including asylum seekers, to be turned back on health grounds, in this case the coronavirus pandemic. A pretext rejected by human rights organizations and one that the Joe Biden administration has not yet withdrawn.
In that regard, on Jan. 5, Biden announced the implementation of a new program to issue 30,000 concessions each month to migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua after Mexico became a tight security space and came under pressure from Republican states. However, these visas, designed to prevent land crossings, can only be applied for if you are entering the country by air and have not attempted to cross the border illegally. Meanwhile, thousands of migrants are stranded in Mexico, with no way of accessing these permits and without being granted asylum in the country.
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