A fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico has claimed the lives of at least 39 people. 29 others were injured and taken to hospital. All were from Central and South America: 28 were Guatemalans, others Venezuelans and Hondurans.
The fire started in the night between Monday and Tuesday, and according to the reconstruction of the Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador it broke out following a protest by a group of migrants who had been informed that they would be repatriated shortly. “Let’s assume that, after finding out that they were going to be deported, they decided to push the mattresses of the shelter against the door and set them on fire in protest, without imagining that they would thus cause this terrible accident,” said López Obrador.
In all, 68 men were held in the facility. Most of them were in the detention center because they had been stopped by the authorities while trying to cross the border between Ciudad Juárez and the city of El Paso in the United States.
Unauthorized entries of people from Central and South America into the United States have increased in recent years. The data cited by CBS News they say that in 2022, at least 853 migrants died trying to cross the US-Mexico border. Last year 53 people were found dead in and around an abandoned truck on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas.
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