• Mexico 38 Killed in Migrant Center Fire on Mexico Border

Staff in charge of a detention center where 39 migrants died during a fire in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez did nothing to evacuate them, the Attorney General's Office, which is investigating eight people for alleged homicide, said Wednesday.

The fire at the National Institute of Migration (INM) station broke out Monday night after a group of migrants set fire to mattresses in protest of their possible deportation, according to authorities.

Several of them had been arrested in the streets of Ciudad Juárez (border with the United States), where they asked for money, sold trinkets or cleaned vehicle windows in exchange for coins.

38 people die in the fire of a migrant center on the border of MexicoEL MUNDO

"None of the public servants or the private security police carried out any action to open the door to the migrants who were already inside with the fire," Sara Irene Herrerías, head of the Special Prosecutor's Office for Human Rights, said at a press conference.

Eight people have been identified as allegedlyresponsible for that omission, Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said at the same conference. They are two federal agents and one state agent of the INM, as well as five members of a private security company.

The prosecutor said that on Wednesday the judges will be asked for four arrest warrants and indicated that the fact is being investigated as "homicide". The suspects "are already giving their statements" to the Prosecutor's Office, he added.

The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), Rosa Icela Rodríguez.Sáshenka GutiérrezEFE

The Secretary of Security adjusted the number of deaths from 38 to 39. It also reported 27 injured, of which six are "extremely serious", ten in "serious" condition and nine "delicate".

But for the second day in a row, authorities still did not detail the nationalities of the victims, stoking the anguish of relatives and friends in Ciudad Juárez.

They have only reported that citizens of Guatemala, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Colombia were at the station, although the Ecuadorian government clarified that there were no nationals of theirs in the place.

There will be no "impunity"

Surveillance video was added to the investigation, the prosecutor said. This 32-second recording shows the moment when the flames start, without apparently the managers opening what appears to be the cell where the migrants were being held.

These images focus the discussion on the possible responsibility of the government, on which the INM depends.

"We are not going to hide anything and there will be no impunity," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said early Wednesday during his daily press conference.

The leftist president is trying to distance himself from actions of previous governments that faced serious cases of human rights violations, such as the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school in 2014, of which only the remains of three have been identified.

"There is no purpose to hide the facts (...), to protect anyone, our government does not allow the violation of human rights nor is impunity allowed," López Obrador said.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre called the video "heartbreaking" and opened up the possibility that some wounded could receive medical attention in the United States.

Meanwhile, the Salvadoran government demanded punishment for those in charge of the station. "How is it possible that the Mexican authorities have left human beings locked up with no possibility of escaping the fire?" asked Erika Guevara, Americas director at Amnesty International.

Anxiety

The organization denounced that the catastrophe is "a consequence of the restrictive and cruel immigration policies shared by the governments of Mexico and the United States."

Migrants see such measures as making it increasingly difficult to reach the United States to escape violence and extreme poverty in their countries.

"Seeking refuge is a human right and not a police issue," reads a banner hung on the INM fence in Ciudad Juárez, whose façade remains stained with soot.

There, dozens of migrants live the anguish of not knowing if their relatives or friends are among those killed or injured in the tragedy, which highlighted the harsh treatment these people receive on their way to the United States.

"That's what we want to know, whether they were in there or not," Gilbert Zabaleta, who is looking for his friends Daniel and Oscar, told AFP.

The last he heard from them was that on Monday they were driven in an INM vehicle to the detention center.

"We think they were inside," Zabaleta said, his face lacerated by the freezing temperatures.

A report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicates that since 2014 some 4,400 people have died or disappeared on the 3,180 km border between Mexico and the United States.

U.S. President Joe Biden has tightened immigration policy, forcing migrants from Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti to seek asylum from the countries through which they transit or arrange online appointments.

The Democratic president is accused by the Republican opposition of having lost control of the border, with more than 4.5 million undocumented people intercepted in that region since he took office.

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