When Isidro’s phone rang past his bedtime, he knew it could only mean a fire had started somewhere in Ciudad Juárez. The man on the other end of the line told him to head to the immigration detention center near the bridge that connects the Mexican border city with El Paso, Texas.
At around 10.20pm on 27 March, Isidro didn’t know he was on his way to an epic tragedy.
When he arrived, he quickly changed into his fire gear and ran to the door of the burning building, passing several lifeless bodies on the ground outside. He was unsure if those men were still alive.
“One of the firefighters said to me, ‘There’s more people inside. Go! Go! Hurry!’ That’s when I realized this could be a tragedy,” said Isidro.
He asked for his true identity to be withheld due to concerns about his safety, as those who fought the fire have been barred from speaking to media amid a federal investigation. Isidro, not his real name, provided the Guardian with some pictures of the fire and audio of related calls to back up his account of being involved.
According to surveillance footage verified by a Mexican government minister, guards attempted to leave the facility as flames grew and smoke filled a cell housing dozens of Latin American migrant men who were unable to escape. Forty migrants died, while more than 20 others sustained injuries.
Isidro entered a hellish scene.
“People weren’t screaming for help. They had been inhaling carbon dioxide produced by the fire, so most of the migrants were unconscious,” he said in an exclusive interview.
He began carrying body after body from the facility. Most seemed to have been overcome by smoke, he recounted, and he and his fellow firefighters found about 20 huddled in the bathroom area where they had fled, turning on the shower to try to dissipate choking smoke.
“After carrying over a dozen people out of the building, I spotted a man sitting on top of a toilet, in the fetal position. I couldn’t really see his face, but I rushed in,” Isidro said.
“I grabbed him by the arms and a partner grabbed his legs and as we were taking him out of the building, the man opened his eyes. He never said thank you, but I felt then he knew he would survive,” he added.
Mexican federal prosecutor Sara Irene Herrerías said the 40 deaths were being investigated as suspected homicides, accusing those in charge of doing nothing to evacuate the victims.
Most recently, the Mexico attorney general’s office filed charges against Francisco Garduño, the head of the country’s National Immigration Institute (INM), for allegedly not preventing the deadly blaze, despite earlier warnings about poor conditions in migrant detention centers.
Two days after the fire, local lawyer Javier Vásquez Campbell filed a complaint on behalf of some of the victims against Salvador González Guerrero, a top INM official in the state of Chihuahua, where Juarez sits. The complaint, reviewed by the Guardian, said: “González Guerrero gave an order via a phone call that migrants ‘housed’ at the place where the fire started should not be released under any circumstances.”
González Guerrero could not be reached for comment. Federal agents are pursuing him with an arrest warrant and as of late last week he was considered a fugitive, El Diario newspaper reported.
Vásquez Campbell also said that two detention center guards and one immigration official reached out to him shortly after the fire seeking legal counsel out of concerns they may be targeted by federal prosecutors.
Human rights groups have long denounced poor conditions and overcrowding in immigration detention centers in Mexico. Some low-quality snapshots from inside the Ciudad Juárez detention facility, taken some weeks before the fire and shared with the Guardian, showed dozens of occupied bunk beds and other migrants in mattresses across the floor.
According to a press release by the INM, 68 migrants from Central and South America were detained at the facility on 27 March. One day later, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said the blaze started when migrants set mattresses on fire to protest against their looming deportations.
Isidro remembered seeing the mattresses in flames as he frantically searched inside the secure facility for anyone still showing vital signs.
“It was during our last walk around the center, when we were making sure that no one was left behind, that I realized there weren’t emergency exit routes, nor fire extinguishers,” said Isidro.
The conditions inside the detention facility as he observed them appear to violate a federal regulation implemented in 2011 to establish guidelines for employers and workers in case of a fire.
The guidelines require workplaces, including those under federal jurisdiction such as immigration detention facilities, to display notices about fire risks, evacuation routes, emergency exits or stairs, and details about where to find a fire extinguisher.
Roberto Briones, director of civil protection in Ciudad Juárez, who oversees the fire department, declined a request to answer questions about the conditions inside the detention center on 27 March. However, he previously told local media that he did not receive any reports of a fire starting at the immigration facility.
Briones said it was a captain from the fire department who saw smoke coming out of the immigration facility and called the fire station.
That matches Isidro’s knowledge of the event and an audio message from a member of the fire department shared with the Guardian.
According to Isidro, anyone trapped in a fire has as little as three minutes to escape death.
Three weeks after the deadly fire, López Obrador suggested that the detention facility’s door remained closed while migrants were trapped inside “because the person who had the keys wasn’t there”.
Isidro believes the tragedy could have been prevented with better safety conditions and a faster reaction time.
“If we had been called in time, we would’ve saved more people,” he said.
