What happened the night of the migrant detention center fire in Juárez?

por La Verdad La Verdadhace 3 semanas

What happened the night of the migrant detention center fire in Juárez?

By: Rocío Gallegos, Blanca Carmona, and Gabriela Minjares

**A joint investigation by La Verdad Juárez, Lighthouse Reports, and El Paso Matters

An investigation by La Verdad Juárez in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and El Paso Matters reveals new details of the events, faults, abuses, and negligence that occurred at the migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on March 27, 2023, and that contributed to the deathly consequences of the fire set in a locked detention cell where 40 migrants died.

Angry shouts came from inside the men’s detention cell at the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juárez on the evening of March 27, 2023.

A group of migrants inside the locked room argued with the center’s security guards and immigration officials over the lack of access to drinking water and food and their constant threats of deportation.

Suddenly, the mood intensified, and the yelling turned into screams of fear and cries of distress.

The migrants pleaded for help to escape the room where the flames from sleeping mats that were on fire grew out of control.

Some of the migrant men who were at the center that day had been behind bars for weeks, and others entered only a few hours before the incident after being detained and transported to the immigration station during a field operation led by local Juárez authorities, INM agents, and the Mexican National Guard.

The migrants begged for the staff to unlock the door to the cell where dozens of men were trapped. Even as the fire spread rapidly, the personnel in charge of the well-being of these people did not take action to ensure their safety.

“We’re not going to open it [the door] for them. I told them already,” said an immigration agent as her colleagues looked for fire extinguishers and gathered the migrant women who were locked in another designated area of the building.

The moment was captured on surveillance video with audio not previously published via a closed-circuit television camera from the INM station, providing clues to the events that unfolded that night.

The fire from the sleeping mats grew uncontrollably, and the toxic smoke filled the room, leaving 40 men dead from asphyxiation, another 27 with life-long injuries, and 15 female survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), making this the incident in which most migrants have died under the custody of Mexican authorities.

Until now, injustice has impeded serious faults, abuses, and negligence from that night from coming to light. These actions contributed to the fatalities that occurred inside the overcrowded locked cell without fire extinguishers, ventilation, fire sprinklers, and working smoke detectors, a death trap for migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela.

The deadly fire occurred at a time when the United States expanded its efforts to discourage migrants from arriving at its southern border under agreements with Mexican authorities. These laws led to massive concentrations of migrants to temporarily stay in border communities such as Juárez, a hotspot for thousands of deportees from the U.S. and migrants arriving from Central and South America in hopes of advancing north.

Almost a year after this tragedy, an investigation by La Verdad together with Lighthouse Reports and El Paso Matters reveals new details about the chain of events that unfolded that March night at the immigration detention facility located a few meters from the border with El Paso, Texas, where Mexican authorities held migrants who arrived in the city to cross into the U.S.

A reconstruction of the crucial minutes prior to and during the night of the fire was formed by analyzing various pieces of evidence, including the testimonies from eight survivors, interviews with emergency personnel who arrived at the scene, surveillance videos, an official investigation file, construction of a 3D model of the station, as well as the stories exposed during the criminal proceedings against 11 people, eight of whom are immigration officials.

The INM – a decentralized body of the Mexican Government– refused to answer questions regarding this incident that arose from this investigation and did not respond to interview requests sent in writing to the lawyers and family members of imprisoned individuals involved in the fire.

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