Mexico immigration agency chief will be charged in migrant center fire that killed 40

Foreign Ministry officers hold portraits beside the coffins of Guatemalan migrants whose remains arrived at the La Aurora Air Force Base in Guatemala City on Tuesday. The Mexican Air Force transported the bodies of 17 migrants who died in a fire at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. (Moises Castillo/AP)

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's top immigration official will face criminal charges in a fire that killed 40 migrants in Ciudad Juárez last month, with federal prosecutors saying he was remiss in not preventing the disaster despite earlier indications of problems at his agency's detention centers.

The decision to file charges against Francisco Garduño, the head of Mexico's National Immigration Institute, was announced late Tuesday by the federal Attorney General's Office.