At least 39 migrants have died in a fire that hit a detention center in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, on the border with the United States, the Mexican government announced on Tuesday.
The National Institute for Migration (INM) “deplores the death of 39 migrants so far as a result of a fire”, according to a press release. According to the local daily El Sol de Parralmost of the victims died of asphyxiation.
An AFP journalist was able to see employees of the forensic service remove a dozen corpses from the INM parking lot near the border and where several other bodies were lined up under blankets.
A rescuer who requested anonymity due to a lack of permission to speak said around 70 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, were at the site.
Viangly, a Venezuelan, screams in despair outside the center where her 27-year-old husband was taken after his arrest in a roundup when, she says, he has Mexican papers. “They took him in an ambulance,” she says. She doesn’t know anything about her condition and complains that the center’s officials “don’t say anything”.
The fire started shortly before midnight Monday, prompting the mobilization in the early morning Tuesday of firefighters and dozens of ambulances.
Ciudad Juárez, neighboring El Paso, Texas, is one of the border towns from which many undocumented migrants seek asylum in the United States.
Restrictive measures
Since 2014, around 7,661 migrants have died or gone missing en route to the United States, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
On March 13, hundreds of weary migrants, mostly Venezuelans, attempted to cross the border, but US agents barred them from crossing.
On June 27, 56 migrants were found suffocated to death in an abandoned trailer near San Antonio, Texas.
US President Joe Biden took new restrictive measures in February on the right to asylum for migrants who have crossed the border with Mexico, forcing them to apply in transit countries or via the Internet.
The measures also provide for more frequent use by the United States of immediate expulsions, accompanied by a ban on new entry into the territory for five years.
Some 200,000 people attempt to cross the border between Mexico and the United States each month. Migrants, anxious to escape poverty or violence in their countries of origin, often take enormous risks to enter American soil.