Video Shows Guards Leaving Mexico Migrant Center Fire That Killed 38 People

Surveillance footage from a detention facility in northern Mexico shows that guards walked away when migrants pushed mattresses up against the bars of their cell and set them on fire.

The video shows that no attempt was made by staff and the guards at the immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico—a key migrant crossing point across the border from El Paso, Texas—to free the men before smoke filled the room and killed 38 of them.

Rows of dead were spread out outside the center under silver sheets hours after the fire started late on Monday. After first reporting 40 dead, authorities later admitted that some may have been double-counted due to miscommunication. The National Immigration Institute reported that 28 persons were hurt and in “delicate-serious” condition.

The facility was housing 68 guys from Central and South America at the time of the fire, according to the agency. According to the institute, the majority came from El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Two guards impersonators run into the camera’s field of view in the footage, and one or more migrants can be seen by the metal gate on the other side. But the guards made no attempt to open the cell doors and instead fled as the building quickly filled with billowing clouds of smoke.

The video’s veracity was confirmed by Mexico’s interior secretary, Adan Augusto Lopez.

According to a statement from the Mexico attorney general’s office, immigration authorities recognized the deceased and injured as being from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.

Andres Manuel López Obrador, the president of Mexico, claimed that migrants set the fire in retaliation for being informed that they will be deported.

According to Mr. Lopez Obrador, “They never expected that this would produce such a horrible catastrophe.”

According to state prosecutor Cesar Jauregui of Chihuahua, the deaths compelled the authorities to hire refrigerator trailers to store the bodies of the migrants.

Viangly Infante Padron, a 31-year-old Venezuelan migrant seeking asylum in the US with her husband and three children, had been waiting outside the detention center for his release when the fire broke out.

“There was smoke everywhere. The ones they let out were the women, and those (employees) with immigration,” she said.

“The men, they never took them out until the firefighters arrived.”

She said she saw several dead bodies before finding her husband in an ambulance.

“I was desperate because I saw a dead body, a body, a body, and I didn’t see him anywhere.”

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 for the asylum process to play out.

More than 30 migrant shelters and other advocacy organizations published an open letter on March 9 that complained about the criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers in the city.

It accused authorities of abusing migrants and using excessive force in rounding them up, including complaints that municipal police questioned people in the street about their immigration status without cause.

Migrant advocates said on Tuesday that the immigration facility was over capacity and that the site of the fire was small and lacked ventilation.

“You could see it coming,” the advocates’ statement said. “Mexico’s immigration policy kills.”

Without providing any other details, the national immigration office stated that it “energetically rejects the activities that led to this tragedy.”

According to Felipe Gonzalez Morales, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Migrants’ Human Rights, “excessive use of immigration detention leads to tragedies like this one.”

He wrote that immigration detention should be a last resort and not a regular practice in accordance with international law.

After the US and Germany, Mexico has emerged as the third most preferred country for asylum seekers worldwide. Yet, most migrants still transit through it on their journey to the US.