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Video released Tuesday from a security camera at the immigration detention center in Juarez City, in Mexico, shows the last moments of life of some of the people who were confined in that place on Monday night. They are seen approaching the bars and placing mattresses which they set on fire. The guards who were on the other side flee without opening the cells while everything fills with smoke. 38 people died and 28 were seriously injured. This is one of the most tragic chapters of the drama that has been experienced on the border with the United States in recent years.
Hours after the tragedy, the Venezuelan migrant Viangly Infante Padrón told the AP agency that her husband was in that detention center. He he had been detained on Monday by immigration agents along with 67 other migrants. Many of them were begging for alms or washing car windows at traffic lights. Juarez Citynear the border with El Paso, Texas, in the United States, the ultimate goal of the migrants.
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The woman remembered that saw immigration agents run out of the building when the fire started. She later watched as the bodies of migrants were carried out on stretchers and wrapped in emergency blankets.
“I was desperate because I saw a corpse, a body, a corpse, and I didn’t see it anywhere,” Infante Padrón explained to the AP about the moments of anguish he experienced when he did not know anything about his partner.
Finally, her husband, Eduard Caraballo López, survived with minor injuries. She thinks that he is alive because he was going to be released and he was near a door.
Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) said on Tuesday that the fire started in a dormitory area and confirmed that there were 68 men in that area.
Migrants who lost their lives They were from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela.
This Wednesday, the Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) asked the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) to take charge of the investigation.
He also said that your government “doesn’t hide anything”. “There is no purpose to hide the facts, no purpose to protect anyone, the violation of human rights is not allowed in our government, nor is impunity allowed,” he asserted.
As he said on Tuesday, AMLO reiterated that the main theory about the cause of the tragedy is that the migrants burned down the station upon learning that they were going to be deported.
Thousands of migrants are staying stranded in Ciudad Juárez because the policy of USA Immigration does not allow them to cross the border to apply for asylum.
This situation is causing discomfort among the residents of Juarez Citywho no longer tolerate seeing migrants blocking border crossings or begging.
According to official figures from the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), during the last fiscal year, which ended on September 30, more than two million people were arrested trying to cross the border, 24% more than the previous year. Of that total, almost 500,000 were Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan citizens.
The pressure on the border cities of Mexico intensified since The United States began to apply Title 42 on migrants, which facilitates their immediate deportation to their countries of origin or to Mexico without allowing them to request asylum.
Title 42 was revived by the Government of donald trump in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. President Joe Biden He promised in the campaign to end it, but so far he has not done so.
According to a CNN report based on Mexican human rights organizations, many of the migrants who were deported to Mexico under Title 42 have been victims of abuse. Since Biden took office in 2021, Human Rights First says it has identified nearly 10,000 cases of kidnapping, torture, rape, or other violent attacks against migrants blocked or expelled through Mexico.
“This is the result of the pressure cooker that Ciudad Juárez has become on the immigration issue. According to the latest official figures, there are close to 12,000 migrants in the city alone and all the shelters and immigration facilities are overflowing. There are very large contingents of Venezuelans, but also from Guatemala, Nicaragua and Cuba, among other countries.”Eunice Rendón, academic and international consultant on migration issues, told Telemundo.
Other experts and activists consulted by Telemundo confirmed that the intense migratory flow has collapsed the official immigration shelters and facilities in the city, and that this generates tensions.
“So far in the new fiscal year of the United States, it is estimated that close to 800,000 migrants have been detained by United States authorities and, at least, 60% have passed through Juárez. In the last five months it has become the main crossing point for irregular mobility between the two countries”said José María Ramos, a researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
what happened in Juarez City Monday night “you could see it coming,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Network of Migrant Houses and Human Rights Centers, which brings together more than 30 organizations. “Mexico’s immigration policy kills,” she added.
The AP agency recalled that the same group published an open letter on March 9 in which denounced the criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers in Ciudad Juarez. The letter accused the authorities of mistreating migrants and using excessive force in arrests, and specifically denounced that the municipal police had questioned people on the street about their immigration status without reason.
Activist Irineo Mujica told the AP that the migrants feared being sent back, not necessarily to their countries of origin but to the south of Mexicofrom where they would have had to cross the country again.
“We had already seen this coming. We had said that the number of people that were being taken away, the number of people that were in that place was creating a ticking time bomb. That time bomb went off today.” Mujica pointed out.
A few days ago, hundreds of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, tried to cross into El Paso, after false rumors circulated that USA would allow them to enter the country. The US authorities blocked them, the AP reported.
Then the mayor of Juarez City, Cruz Pérez Cuellar, told the migrants that there was space in the shelters and that they did not have to beg on the streets. She also asked the neighbors not to give them money and said that the authorities would remove them from the intersections where it was dangerous to beg and where the neighbors saw them as a nuisance.
Source: Elcomercio
I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.
