The director of the National Institute of Migration (INM) in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Salvador González Guerrero, has been arrested in connection with the fire that killed 40 migrants at a detention center in late March, authorities have learned.
• Also read: Mexico: 38 migrants died in a detention center fire
• Also read: Security forces leave behind 38 prisoners who die in fire
• Also read: Security forces leave behind 38 prisoners who die in fire
• Also read: Mexico: Investigation into ‘murder’ after 39 migrants die in fire
According to the State Department of Security’s arrest record, the officer was arrested Sunday night by federal agents in Ciudad Juarez, a United States border city in northern Mexico, where the tragedy occurred on the night of March 27-28.
Mexican authorities believe the fire was started by a migrant who set fire to a mattress in the cell he shared with 67 other men to protest possible deportation.
Footage from surveillance cameras showed that after the fire broke out, neither immigration personnel nor security personnel came to the aid of migrants who were locked in their cells when the fire broke out.
39 of them suffocated on the spot, another died in hospital. A total of 19 Guatemalans, 7 Salvadorans, 7 Venezuelans, 6 Hondurans and one Colombian were killed. Most of the bodies of these migrants who had hoped to cross to the United States from Ciudad Juarez have been repatriated.
According to press reports, Mr González Guerrero is said to have been accused of ordering the cell to be closed. He tried to prevent his arrest with legal action, local media reported.
A murder investigation was launched after the fire and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised there would be no “impunity”.
Four other INM officers were arrested after the tragedy, along with a security guard and a migrant suspected of setting the mattress on fire.