They order preventive detention for three other officials for the fire in a migrant center in Ciudad Juárez

By Fabiola Sánchez -

A judge ordered on Friday preventive detention for three officials of the National Institute of Migration (INM) of the state of Chihuahua, after being charged with a crime of homicide for their alleged connection to the fire that occurred in a detention center in Ciudad Juárez that left 40 deceased migrants at the end of March.

The Federal Judicial Council indicated that during a hearing held before the federal criminal courts in Ciudad Juárez, the three were informed that they face charges of unlawful exercise of public service, homicide and injury.

The bodies of migrants who died in the fire at a Mexican government migrant center in Ciudad Juárez lie on the ground, covered by thermal blankets, on March 28, 2023.Getty Images / Getty Images

The officials charged are the head of the Department of Material Resources of the INM in Chihuahua, Eduardo Apodaca, the deputy director of the Beta Group for the Protection of Migrants, Juan Carlos Meza, and the migration official Cecilia Rivera, who were detained on Thursday, according to what was reported to the news agency The Associated Press a federal agent who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The authorities also issued an arrest warrant against retired Rear Admiral Salvador González Guerrero, an INM delegate in Chihuahua, but a judge in that state granted him a temporary suspension of the warrant.

Instead, he established that he "must physically and personally appear before the judge in his case to hold the initial hearing," according to the court ruling.

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The three arrests requested by the Prosecutor's Office were carried out after a judge in Ciudad Juárez approved the arrest warrants against Apodaca, Meza, Rivera and González Guerrero.

Last month a magistrate had agreed to the arrest of six other people for their links to the case, of which only five have been arrested.

The Chihuahua Federal Criminal Justice Center also approved on Thursday the summons of the head of the INM, Francisco Garduño, and the head of Immigration Control and Verification, Antonio Molina, who must appear before a court on April 20 and 21 to hear the charges. of those who are accused.

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Garduño and Molina will be prosecuted for alleged criminal conduct by failing to comply with their obligations to monitor, protect and provide security to the people and facilities in their charge.

The announcement of Garduño's summons came a day after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ruled out for the moment demanding the resignation of the head of the INM and praised his work.

After the fire that occurred on the night of March 27 in the INM detention center in Ciudad Juárez, humanitarian organizations and activists have intensified the questions against the management of Garduño, who assumed the leadership of the immigration agency in June 2019, six months later. that López Obrador came to the Government.

[“This fire is the result of the pressure cooker that Ciudad Juárez has turned into on the immigration issue,” experts denounce]

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) of Mexico published a report on Thursday in which it denounced violations of human rights and dignified treatment committed by INM officials to the detriment of more than 20 people, including minors, who were housed " in undignified conditions" in immigration centers in the towns of Saltillo and Piedras Negras, in the state of Coahuila and on the border with the United States

In response to the complaints, the CNDH issued a series of recommendations addressed to Garduño so that the situation in those centers be addressed and that the personnel be trained in human rights.

The Federal Control judge in Ciudad Juárez linked to the process on April 4 other five people accused of the fire, identified in the Mexican press as INM officials Daniel Goray, Rodolfo Collazo and Gloria Ramos;

guard Alan Pascual Ventura;

and the Venezuelan migrant Jaison Daniel Catari, who is accused of starting the fire by burning some mattresses in a protest.