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The incident occurred in a center in the border town of Ciudad Juárez where there were 68 migrants from Central and South America. According to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who blamed the migrants, they were protesting because they were told they were going to be deported and began burning mattresses. The poor conditions of these places of temporary passage and their overcrowding could also have played a key role in the dimension of the tragedy.
The northern border of Mexico experienced one of the greatest tragedies in recent years. At least 40 migrants died and another 28 were injured after a fire in a center where they were sheltered in Ciudad Juárez suffered last morning.
According to the Guatemalan Foreign Minister, 28 fellow citizens of the Central American nation are among the victims of the tragedy.
The exact causes of the accident are still unknown, although in his daily press conference, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador commented that the migrants were protesting because they were told they were going to be deported and began burning mattresses.
The images from last night show how the situation that was experienced in that reception center for migrants was extremely serious, since dozens of corpses were piled up by the authorities and many of the injured are in very serious conditions.
This center mainly welcomed migrants from various Central American countries and Venezuelans who wanted to cross into the United States in search of a better life. Many of them planned to cross in the coming weeks or were awaiting the approval of an asylum visa.
The National Human Rights Commission has begun work to help and repatriate the corpses and is the only one that has “vigorously” rejected the causes of this accident, although without giving further details.
Migrant centers are in the spotlight due to their poor conditions
The detention centers for migrants in Mexico are the focus of controversy due to the conditions that migrants are forced to endure. These centers are overcrowded and this means that the people who live there do so in deficient safety and hygiene conditions. Overcrowding is the general trend and this is a source of tension between the migrants themselves or between them and the authorities.
During the last months there have been several protests in these places. For example, in October, hundreds of migrants locked themselves up inside an immigration center in Tijuana as a symbol of weariness, which had to be controlled by the police and members of the National Guard.
In November, dozens of people rioted at Mexico’s largest detention center, in the southern city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. However, no one was killed in either incident.
These people travel thousands of kilometers in extreme conditions and, in many cases, are extorted by criminal gangs on their journey to the United States. The conditions of violence, poverty or hunger are what make them leave nations like El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Honduras in search of a better life.
However, in recent years the United States has tightened its migrant asylum policies, delaying the acceptance processes of people for months. In this matter, Mexico has become the stopper and absorption country for most of these people.
Mexico experiences an increase in the migratory flow despite the restrictions
The region is experiencing levels of arrival of migrants never seen before, since only on the border between Mexico and the United States in 2022 2.76 million undocumented immigrants were detained. In addition, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the migratory flow increased by 8% in Mexican territory.
In recent weeks there has been a high accumulation of people on the northern border of Mexico and there have been moments of tension due to false rumors that the United States would once again allow migrants free passage.
The reality is that Washington seems far from this, even if Donald Trump is no longer in power. During the more than two years of the Biden Administration, the United States has continued to take advantage of laws such as Title 42, which allows the expulsion of migrants who intend to enter the territory with the excuse of the health crisis that the Covid pandemic caused in its day. -19.
With AP, Reuters and EFE
