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At least 39 people have died in a fire at a migration center on the US-Mexico border, officials said on Tuesday.
Authorities believe the fire was sparked by a protest initiated by some migrants detained at the center “after we think they knew they were being deported,” according to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to initial reports, the migrants placed small mattresses outside the shelter’s door and set them on fire “in protest,” López Obrador told a news conference Tuesday morning. “They didn’t expect it to cause such misfortune.”
Anthony Gonzalez, a Venezuelan migrant who was held at the facility last week after being sent back to Mexico by US authorities, told Noticias Telemundo he finds it hard to believe the migrants could start a fire as they are kept behind locked doors and “they take All.” from you in front of the entrance.
“It looks like a prison,” Gonzalez said in Spanish.
The fire started after 21:00 Monday evening at the migration center of the National Institute of Migration in Ciudad Juarez, the agency said. The migrants at the facility were detained by the authorities.
Although the National Institute for Migration did not immediately disclose the cause of the fire, the agency said it “categorically rejects the actions that led to this tragedy,” without specifying what they could be.
Dozens more were injured and 29 people were taken to four hospitals in a “delicately serious condition,” the agency said, adding that 68 men from Central and South America, mostly Venezuela, were in the hospital at the time of the incident. fire.
According to Lopez Obrador, authorities are not releasing the names of the victims. But the General Directorate of Migration of Guatemala confirmed that 28 Guatemalans were among the dead.
According to the country’s prosecutor general, who launched an investigation, 13 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, 12 Venezuelans, Colombians and Ecuadorians were among the detainees. As a result of the fire, 68 people were injured..
Consular teams were also called in to further identify the dead, officials said.
“Smoke started coming from everywhere”
Images showed rows of bodies lying under silver sheets as rescuers, firefighters and police arrived at the scene.
Amidst the chaos, Venezuelan migrant Viangli Infante desperately searched for her 27-year-old husband, Eduardo Caraballo.
Infante said Caraballo was one of many migrants detained by Mexican authorities on Monday and detained at the National Migration Institute center.
“I’ve been here since 1:00 p.m., waiting for the father of my children, and when it was 10:00 p.m., smoke started coming from everywhere,” she told Reuters.
According to Infante, her husband survived by dousing himself with water and leaning against the door.
Francisco Garduño Yáñez, commissioner of the National Migration Institute, visited local hospitals where injured migrants had been taken “to check on their health.” tweet.
The agency also said immigration authorities would “provide Visitor cards for humanitarian causes wounded and cover medical needs for a speedy recovery.” Migrants seeking refugee status or victims of crime in Mexico may be eligible for these cards.
Betty Camargo, director of government programs at the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR), an organization for human rights advocacy and immigration reform along the U.S.-Mexico border, told NBC News she spoke to migrants who witnessed the fire in downtown and on the border with Mexico. . Mexico. the events that preceded it.
Authorities at the center told some of the detained migrants they were being deported, Camargo said, although many of them had temporary work permits that were renewed every month. Migrants said they were told such permits would be taken away from them, she added.
Fernando Garcia, chief executive of the BNHR, said these migration centers “should not be detention centers.”
Most of the migration centers operated by the National Migration Institute are designed to serve as a processing center and “centro de alohamiento” (hospitals) for short stays of transit migrants.
This prompted the organization to call for an investigation into the fire at the facility.
The facility in the state of Chihuahua is located on the Mexican side of the bridge connecting Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.
Ciudad Juarez is the main border crossing point for migrants trying to cross into the US.
Its shelters are filled with migrants waiting to cross the border or complete the asylum process.
In recent years, as Mexico stepped up efforts to contain migration to the US border under pressure from Washington, its National Institute of Immigration has struggled with overcrowding at its premises.
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