MEXICO CITY — Days before the first anniversary of the fire at the immigration station in Ciudad Juárez, which occurred on March 27, 2023, leaving 40 migrants dead, a new journalistic investigation reveals new details that show a series of failures in the protocols of security.
"Several survivors interviewed for this investigation confirmed previous reports that migrants detained by the National Migration Institute (INM)
lacked food and water, were kept locked in an overcrowded cell
, and were verbally abused and threatened with deportation," it said. read in the cross-border report carried out by the media El Paso Matters, La Verdad and Lighthouse Reports.
According to authorities, the fire began when a group of detained migrants began burning their mattresses in protest of overcrowded conditions and the lack of water and food.
In various security videos leaked shortly after the incident, smoke begins to come out of the cell, while the immigration agents fled without helping the detained people.
"There are too many irregularities, such as the saturated cell. During the day, groups of migrants that numbered more than 100 people entered and left. In an audio recording we were able to hear someone say that there were no fire extinguishers, but they were there. The place did not have ventilation and there were no smoke detectors that worked. All of this was a death trap for the migrants who died there," explains Rocío Gallegos, director of the newspaper La Verdad and co-author of the investigation, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
[Migrants who were saved from dying in the fire in Ciudad Juárez recount the hours before the tragedy]
The aforementioned media had access to 16 hours of security camera footage, both outside and inside the station, and thousands of pages of documents, including court affidavits and other records.
"The lack of justice until now has prevented serious irregularities, abuses and omissions from coming to light that led to and contributed to the fatality in this fire in a locked cell, saturated, without fire extinguishers, without ventilation, without fire sprinklers and with non-functioning smoke detectors", say the investigators who specify that migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia and Venezuela died in the incident.
The incident is still being investigated and nine of the eleven accused people await trial while they remain in prisons in Ciudad Juárez.
"When we arrived, they separated the men and women. They left us in a separate space, but they locked the men behind a fence. My husband didn't want to be put there, he resisted a lot and that's why they hit him. They abused us very badly, and at five in the afternoon they released us. Then we saw that the men who were stuck there, many of them died from the flames," Doralvys, a Venezuelan woman who was released along with her husband hours before the fire.
The revelations of the investigation
In one of the videos analyzed by investigators, a woman in an INM uniform is heard sending text messages while shouting: "No... we are not going to open it to them, I already told the guys."
According to the transnational report, several survivors said that
racist insults by officials were common.
Although in April 2023, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, assured that the person who had the keys to the cell was not present, investigators contradict that version.
[“This fire is the result of the pressure cooker that Ciudad Juárez has become regarding the immigration issue,” experts denounce]
"The keys were always in the building. This is concluded after analyzing the images of 15 fixed security cameras inside and outside the migrant center, which monitor the most important areas of the building day and night; the entrance, the office administration, the guard area in front of the men's cell and the cell itself," the report states.
Furthermore, investigators assert that, throughout that day, several officials opened and closed the cell "and the next door with two sets of keys."
"They could have opened the door completely, but they didn't want to open it [...] They simply argued that the key was not there. How could the key be missing? Just moments before they had opened the cell door," said Estuardo, a 25-year-old Guatemalan migrant and former security guard who survived the fire and was interviewed by investigators.
The current commissioner of the INM, Francisco Garduño Yáñez, is linked to the process for his alleged responsibility in the faulty omissions that caused the fire, but he faces the judicial process in freedom.
Eight other INM authorities and private security guards are charged in the case because prosecutors have stated that the incident showed a "pattern of irresponsibility."
"The person who is in charge of the institution that has to respond to the investigating authorities and who has to report elements so that the process can continue is one of those investigated. That is a great inconsistency," Gallegos asserts.
[The precariousness of the centers for migrants in Mexico is evident with the fire in Ciudad Juárez]
The detention center closed after the fire and Garduño announced last May that it would be replaced by a new building near the Ysleta-Zaragoza international bridge, about 24 kilometers to the east and would be overseen by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). ).
The new facilities are not yet ready, nor has an opening date been announced.
"I understand that there have been many problems because no one wants to work at the station. Of course, after what happened they have not been able to hire people or anything. I think there has to be an alternative way, some alliance or whatever to address the problem. issue," explains Eunice Rendón, academic and international consultant on migration issues, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
Last year, the Secretary of Security of Mexico, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, reported that "the process began to revoke the permit of the company Grupo de Seguridad Privada Camsa SA de CV", which was the company hired by the INM to guard its detention centers in several states.
For experts like Rendón, private companies should not be in charge of control and supervision tasks in these immigration facilities.
"Let the Ministry of Citizen Security get involved. These types of facilities are high risk, you have to be very careful and it is not possible that they are leaving it in the hands of private companies," said Rendón.
According to the investigation, 29 survivors of the fire received expedited temporary humanitarian parole from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
[Mexico announces first arrests for the fire that left 39 migrants dead in Ciudad Juárez]
The Mexican Government, through the INM, proposed reparations to the victims' families.
Last July, funds of about $200,000 (3.5 million pesos) were approved for each of the families of the 40 men who died in the fire, an amount that human rights groups condemned as insufficient.
“Until now, monetary reparation has focused on the families of the deceased.
Reparation is lacking for survivors who, in many cases, still have no contact with the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims.
Unfortunately, history in Mexico shows us that many years have to pass before people can enjoy a little justice,” said Blanca Navarrete, director of Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción, an organization in Ciudad Juárez that provides services to migrants.
Noticias Telemundo contacted the Mexican National Immigration Institute for comment on the investigation conducted by El Paso Matters, La Verdad and Lighthouse Reports.
A spokeswoman for the institute said that "at the moment there will be no position on the matter."
"Our intention to reveal this is for
the best interest of society so that the truth is known
and because this occurred in a public instance. This is a serious violation of human rights," Gallegos asserted.