The staff in charge of a detention center where 39 migrants died during a fire in Mexico's Ciudad Juárez did nothing to evacuate them, the Attorney General's Office said Wednesday, which is investigating eight people for alleged homicide.
The fire at the National Migration Institute (INM) station broke out on Monday night after a group of migrants set fire to mattresses in protest of their possible deportation, according to authorities.
Several of them had been detained on the streets of Ciudad Juárez (on the border with the United States), where they asked for money, sold trinkets or cleaned vehicle windows in exchange for coins.
"None of the public servants or the private security police took any action to open the door for the migrants who were already inside with the fire," Sara Irene Herrerías, head of the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Human Rights, said at a press conference. Human rights.
Eight people have been identified as allegedly responsible for this omission, Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said at the same conference. They are two federal agents and a state agent from the INM, as well as five members of a private security company.
The prosecutor said that this Wednesday the judges will be asked for four arrest warrants and indicated that the act is being investigated as "homicide." The suspects "are already giving their statements" to the Prosecutor's Office, she added.
The Secretary of Security adjusted the number of deaths from 38 to 39. She also reported 27 injuries, of which six are "extremely serious", ten in a "serious" condition and nine "delicate".
But for the second day in a row, the authorities continued without detailing the nationalities of the victims, fueling the anguish of family and friends in Ciudad Juárez.
They have only reported that there were citizens of Guatemala, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Colombia at the station, although the Ecuadorian government clarified that there were no nationals there.
A surveillance video was incorporated into the investigation, the prosecutor reported. This 32-second recording shows the moment the flames started, without the managers apparently opening what appears to be the cell where the migrants were being held.
These images center the discussion on the possible responsibility of the government, on which the INM depends.
"We are not going to hide anything and there will be no impunity," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador guaranteed early Wednesday during his daily press conference.
The leftist president tries to distance himself from the actions of previous governments that faced serious cases of human rights violations, such as the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school in 2014, of which only the remains of three have been identified.
"There is no purpose of hiding the facts (...), of protecting anyone, the violation of human rights is not allowed in our government, nor is impunity allowed," said López Obrador.
For her part, Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, described the video as "heartbreaking" and opened the possibility that some of the wounded receive medical attention in the United States.
Meanwhile, the Salvadoran government demanded punishment for those in charge of the station. "How is it possible that the Mexican authorities have left human beings locked up without the possibility of escaping from the fire?" Asked Erika Guevara, Amnesty International's director for the Americas.
The organization denounced that the catastrophe is "a consequence of the restrictive and cruel immigration policies shared by the governments of Mexico and the United States."
Migrants believe that these measures make it increasingly difficult for them to reach the United States to escape violence and extreme poverty in their countries.
"Seeking refuge is a human right and not a police matter," reads a banner hanging from the gate of the INM in Ciudad Juárez, whose façade remains stained with soot.
There, dozens of migrants live the anguish of not knowing if their relatives or friends are among those killed or injured in the tragedy, which highlighted the harsh treatment that these people receive on their way to the United States.
"That's what we want to know, if they were in there or not," Venezuelan Gilbert Zabaleta, who is looking for his friends Daniel and Óscar, told AFP.
The last thing he heard from them was that on Monday they were taken in an INM vehicle to the detention center.
"We believe they were inside," said Zabaleta, his face lacerated by the low temperatures.
A report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicates that since 2014 some 4,400 people have died or disappeared on the 3,180 km border between Mexico and the United States.
US President Joe Biden tightened immigration policy, forcing migrants from Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti to request asylum from the countries through which they transit or make appointments online.
The Democratic president is accused by the Republican opposition of having lost control of the border, with more than 4.5 million people intercepted without papers in that region since he took office.
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