Viangly Infante, the face of the fire in Ciudad Juárez: "The men locked up were screaming and kicking the walls"

With an undone ponytail and a red fleece, a desperate woman clings to an ambulance, pounding it with her fists, screaming, scratching at the window.

Inside it is her husband, one of those injured in the brutal fire on Monday night in a center of the National Institute of Migration (Inami) in Ciudad Juárez.

The next day his photo appeared on the front pages of the newspapers, on the news outside and inside Mexico: he was the face of a tragedy.

At least 39 men dead and 27 wounded, most in serious condition, suffocated inside a detention cell from which no one got them out in time.

Now, a few meters from where the fire happened, Viangly Infante says that this was not the way to become famous, that her husband is out of danger and that she is breathing much easier, but even so, she asks what everyone they shout:

Infante is from Venezuela, he left La Guairá, in the north of the country, on October 6.

At the age of 31, she became one of the seven million Venezuelans who have left her country.

She did it accompanied by her three children — two boys aged 12 and 13, and a one-year-old girl — and her partner, Eduard Caraballo, 26, also Venezuelan.

Together they crossed the Darien jungle, in Colombia, and all of Central America, until entering Tapachula on November 1, the south pole of migration in Mexico.

The country is not easy, but they crossed it completely.

They jumped to the US side from Piedras Negras, the Coahuila town that merges with Eagle Pass, in the US. From there they were deported on December 22 under the controversial Title 42, an old directive that was revived by the Government of Donald Trump to to be able to expel undocumented migrants to Mexico,

and that Joe Biden has not yet withdrawn.

With the same journey as thousands behind them, the family landed in Ciudad Juárez, they got a job, they got permission to reside and also a new appointment, to legally return to the US. Until smoke got in the way.

Immigration authorities in Juárez began a vicious tentacle raid on the entire border city on Monday.

They took dozens of migrants who were in an Oxxo, in a hospital, on a sidewalk, near the wall or, like Caraballo, simply walking the streets of Juarez.

"He had gone out to look for medicine for the girl because she has seizures," explains Viangly Infante.

Around 2:00 p.m., she received a call from her husband, who was detained in the Inami center, which is between the two main bridges that connect Juárez with El Paso.

"They had not let him open his Gmail where he had his papers, so he tells me to go up to show the physical and demonstrate that we are a family nucleus and that we are legal here," he says, "I arrived with my three children and I they left me waiting all day and never released it to me,

They just said 'yes, right now'.

Until 9:30 p.m. when the fire started.

An element of the National Guard guards the National Institute of Migration of Ciudad Juárez. Nayeli Cruz

"They are burning"

Infante and his children were installed in the family area, which is located under some white tents to one side of the detention center.

He heard them first, the 68 men locked up in a cell with high walls and white bars: “They were screaming, they were hitting the walls.

Smoke started coming out.

It was everywhere: in the offices, in the bathroom.

All".

It was the smoke that scared the immigration staff who were sheltering the 15 women and children.

They decided to take them outside.

"I ask what's going on, why don't the men come out, why don't they open the fence, the gate, for the men, and all they knew how to say was: 'They are burning," he describes.

“I got very desperate and started yelling at them.

Then they took me out into the street and left me here.

I got very close to the gate and saw how they were taking out the dead bodies, but I couldn't see my husband," she continues, "I got desperate, stood on the other side and looked into the ambulance and saw that he was inside, that they were resuscitating him .

It was when I became anguished, depressed, I began to scream to see if he would hear me, until he reacted and was able to sit down.

Then they tried to tie him up and I screamed again and they took him away."

That same night, Infante – who in some images shows how he carries his sick baby on his shoulder – came to see him at the hospital.

He was asphyxiated and had suffered poisoning in his eyes, nose, mouth and throat.

In these 48 hours he has improved, but his throat continues to be so irritated that he has barely been able to speak to her about the "trauma of what he experienced there inside her."

Migrants place flowers on the altar dedicated to the 38 deceased during the fire last Monday at the INM.

Nayeli Cruz

How did Eduard Caraballo survive and not others?

His wife has no answers, she only knows that his clothes were completely wet when she left the detention center: "He says that he locked himself in the bathroom to save himself."

The young Venezuelan is one of the slightly injured, there are 16 who are in critical condition, many are burned.

“They were inside with the fire for 15 minutes until the fire department came.

The firefighters took them out," says Viangly Infante.

The fire started inside the migrants' cell.

The Mexican government points out that they started it, burning some mattresses, as a protest because they were going to be deported.

The Attorney General's Office, which has taken over the investigation, is inclined to believe that they got the spark by stripping the cables of a camera, but this has not yet been confirmed.

It has been made clear that no one opened the cell in which they were caged with the flames.

The images from a camera in the center show how at least three public servants leave the room where the 68 men were while the smoke was growing, without attending to the kicks or the calls of the victims.

This was also stated by the Secretary of Public Security of Mexico, Rosa Icela Rodríguez: “The fire started and none of the servers or private police officers took any action to open the door for the migrants who were with the fire.

They were not able to open a gate”.

The secretary has also said that she has already identified her probable responsibility for what happened to three officials —two federal and one state—, five private security guards and one migrant.

Four arrest warrants were going to be requested today.

The crimes investigated, for the moment, by the Attorney General's Office —in charge of the case— are homicide and damage to the property of others.

Outside the INM, banners were placed demanding justice for the 38 migrants who lost their lives during the fire. Nayeli Cruz

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