CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — At least 39 migrants were killed and dozens more were injured Monday night when a fire broke out in an immigrant detention center in Mexico, just south of the U.S. border, authorities said Tuesday.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the blaze in Ciudad Juarez began when migrants ignited mattresses after they found out they were going to be deported to their home countries. He said most of the dead were from Central and South America.
“They never imagined that it would cause this terrible misfortune,” López Obrador said.
A Mexican federal official with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the migrants were protesting because 68 of them were packed into a cell meant for no more than 50 people and they had no access to drinking water.
The fire, which erupted at a National Migration Institute lockup about 400 feet south of the Rio Bravo, which separates Juarez from El Paso, was one of the deadliest incidents ever recorded at an immigration holding center in Mexico.
It triggered an immediate outcry from migrant advocates, who blamed the deaths on a series of ever-more stringent immigration policies in both the United States and Mexico.
It also raised questions about Mexico’s ability to care for and manage migrants as the U.S. prepares to roll out a new policy that would turn back an even larger number of asylum seekers this summer.
Already, northern Mexican cities have been overwhelmed with migrants because of recent Biden administration policies that limit the ability of migrants from four countries to to seek asylum at the border.
Tensions have been particularly high in Ciudad Juarez, where shelters housing people hoping to cross into the United States are overflowing and stranded migrants have been begging for food and money in the streets.
“We have exceeded our capacity to provide attention,” said Miguel Angel Gonzalez, president of a church-based network of shelters in Juarez. He said his network’s 15 shelters have been completely full for the last six months.
City officials have been vocally critical of the migrants, who beg for alms at major intersections and sleep on the ground near border bridges that lead to El Paso.
Juarez Mayor Cruz Peréz Cuéllar recently implored residents not to give migrants money, insisting that they can find work.
In a March 9 letter, several dozen migrant advocacy groups urged the city to investigate abuses of migrants by police and immigration officials. They said that during arbitrary detentions, officials have questioned migrants about their legal status, extorted and stolen money from them and destroyed their documents.
The letter described an incident in early March when it said police violently and arbitrarily detained migrants in a downtown cathedral as well as another incident the following week when members of the army, the national guard and the city police swarmed a hotel where migrants were staying, sending “a clear message of intimidation.”
Tensions bubbled over a few weeks ago when hundreds of people — mostly from Venezuela — tried to force their way across an international bridge to El Paso before they were stopped by U.S. authorities.
The numbers of migrants in cities like Juarez are expected to grow this summer as the Biden administration prepares to implement a new policy that would further restrict access to asylum at the border.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, federal officials have used a public health measure called Title 42 to prevent migrants from seeking asylum at the border and to quickly expel those who attempt to enter the U.S.
With that border policy set to expire in May, the Biden administration last month unveiled a new plan that would make migrants ineligible for asylum if they enter the U.S. without permission and fail to apply for protection in another country on their way.
Under the new plan, some could still request asylum at an official port of entry but would largely be required to do so using a smartphone app that migrants complain has been riddled with technical glitches and offers limited appointments that fill up within minutes.
On Monday night and early Tuesday morning, authorities pulled remains from the still smoldering building, lining up their bodies, wrapped in shiny silver blankets, on the ground.
According to the Mexican attorney general’s office, the dead and injured included 28 Guatemalans, 13 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, 12 Venezuelans and one citizen each from Colombia and Ecuador. It was unclear whether some of the migrants had been previously deported from the United States.
Migrant advocates say policies that criminalize asylum seekers were to blame.
“This was not an accident, this could have been avoided,” the advocacy group Sin Fronteras wrote on Twitter. It blamed the government for not having proper protocols and evacuation routes in case of fires, citing a fire at a migrant facility in the southern Mexican city of Tenosique in 2020 that killed one migrant and injured 10 others.
Felipe Gonzalez Morales, U.N. Special Rapporteur Human Rights of Migrants, also blamed government policies.
“The extensive use of immigration detention leads to tragedies like this,” he wrote on Twitter. “The immigration detention of adults, in accordance with International Law, should be an exceptional measure and not a general one.”
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(Los Angeles Times staff writers Linthicum reported from Todos Santos, Mexico, and Miller from Mexico City. Special correspondent Minjares reported from Ciudad Juarez. Times staff writers Patrick McDonnell and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City and Andrea Castillo in Washington contributed to this report.)
