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Mexican authorities report 39 dead in fire at immigration center

Mexican authorities report 39 dead in fire at immigration center
Photo: VOA

March 28 |

A fire at a migrant detention center in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez left 39 dead and 29 injured, the National Migration Institute said in a statement Tuesday.

Images from the site showed rows of bodies under emergency blankets in front of the compound. Ambulances, firefighters and morgue vans were also seen.

The fire started Monday night at a Mexican immigration agency facility near the El Paso border, in a dormitory area where “68 adult men from Central and South America were being held,” the statement added.

The injured were transported “in serious condition to four local hospitals for immediate attention”.

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Authorities were investigating the cause of the fire and called in the National Human Rights Commission, an official entity, to attend to the migrants.

They also began working with consular officials from several countries to identify the deceased.

“The National Migration Institute strongly rejects the acts that resulted in this tragedy,” the note added, without clarifying what actions it was referring to.

Migrant internment centers have been the scene of occasional protests and riots, especially at times of high migratory flow and when the detention facilities were more crowded. However, an incident as lethal as Monday night’s was not in recent memory.

According to the website of the NGO “Sin Fronteras”, which monitors Mexican immigration facilities, the Ciudad Juarez facility has a capacity for 60 people.

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In October, Venezuelan migrants rioted inside an immigration center in Tijuana which had to be controlled by police and National Guard troops. In November, a similar situation occurred at the Tapachula detention center near the Guatemalan border. There were no deaths in either incident.

Ciudad Juarez is an important transit point for migrants arriving in the United States. Its shelters are full of migrants waiting for opportunities to cross or who have applied for asylum in the United States and are waiting for their cases to be processed.

In early March, more than 30 civil organizations and migrant shelters issued a statement denouncing the growing criminalization of foreigners in the city, as well as the existence of “arbitrary detentions where municipal agents question people’s immigration status, extort them, break their documentation and steal money and other belongings.”

The tension of those waiting in that town was felt a little more than two weeks ago when a group encouraged by false rumors that they could cross into the United States attempted to cross the border bridge en masse and was blocked by U.S. authorities.

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Trump administration launches large-scale immigration operation in Chicago

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“I was in Chicago today to make it clear that we will not back down,” the secretary wrote. “Our work is just beginning,” she added.

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Operation “Midway Blitz” is currently focused on the Chicago metropolitan area and its suburbs. Activists and residents have reported sightings of masked agents and unmarked vehicles in predominantly Latino neighborhoods.

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