A harrowing video has captured the moment guards at a Mexican detention center leave at least 40 migrants to burn alive after they set their mattresses on fire to protest their deportations.
Officers can be seen fleeing the locked cell containing inmates as it fills with flames and plumes of smoke in a clip that has been viewed around 1.4 million times.
The video was shared by Mexican journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga, who described the situation as “criminal.”
The fire broke out around 9:30 p.m. Monday local time at a center in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez.
It was apparently caused by a protest by inmates over the deportations, authorities said Tuesday.
A guard at the detention center is seen running away from the locked cell as it fills with columns of smoke and flames. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said no one thought the protest would result in this “terrible tragedy.”
Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) said 40 male migrants from Central and South America died in the fire, while another 28 were hospitalized.
However, the Guatemalan and Honduran authorities counted 41 deaths between them.
Guatemala’s National Migration Institute said 28 of its citizens died in the fire, while Honduras’s vice foreign minister said 13 were from his country.
It is not clear why the death toll figures differ.
Heartbreaking images released Tuesday showed dozens of body bags lined up side by side.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said authorities believed the fire in the town across from El Paso, Texas, broke out after some immigrants set mattresses on fire in protest after finding out they would be deported.
He did not provide further details on how many had been killed in the incident.
“They did not think that this would cause this terrible tragedy,” López Obrador said at a news conference, noting that most of the migrants at the facility were from Central America and Venezuela.
The fire, one of the deadliest to hit the country in years, occurred as the United States and Mexico struggle to cope with record levels of border crossings on their shared border.
At least 40 migrant men died in the fire, Mexican authorities confirmed. Heartbreaking images showed the body bags of the deceased all lined up next to each other.
Viangly Infante, a Venezuelan migrant, reacts outside an ambulance for her injured husband Eduard Caraballo as Mexican authorities and firefighters remove the injured migrants.
A witness at the scene overnight saw bodies lying on the ground in body bags behind a yellow security cordon, surrounded by emergency vehicles. The fire had been extinguished.
It was not immediately clear how the fire was managed, if there were any emergency exits or what protocols officials took to deal with the protests.
Two migrants told Reuters authorities had rounded up migrants on the streets of Ciudad Juárez on Monday and detained them downtown.
Alejandra Corona, a Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) representative who visits the facilities once a week to monitor conditions, said they are divided into two areas, one for men and one for women, each closed off with a metal door. and supervised by a Security Guard.
The space is designed to hold about 100 people, he added.
“They put them in cells and they don’t come out until they are transferred,” Corona said, adding that migrants usually spend two days there.
Paramedics carry an injured migrant after a fire that killed dozens of migrants
Forensics lift the bodies of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, who died in a fire inside the National Institute of Migration
Medics provide aid to a migrant who survived the horrifying fire, which was caused by migrants protesting for fear of deportation.
Activists have frequently raised concerns about poor conditions and overcrowding in detention centers as migration increases.
“The events of last night are a horrific example of why organizations have been working to limit or eliminate detention in Mexico,” said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Mexico-based Institute for Women in Migration, which supports the rights of the migrants.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement that the secretary-general called for a “thorough investigation” into the tragic event.
Mexico’s INM did not respond to a request for comment on when the Ciudad Juárez site opened or how many migration centers are currently in operation.
As of 2019, there were 53 INM detention centers operating throughout Mexico, according to a report by the Mexican Human Rights Commission (CNDH), with a total official capacity of around 3,000.
Viangly Infante, a Venezuelan national, was waiting outside the center when the fire started.
Firefighters and Mexican soldiers stand during a rescue of migrants from an immigration station in Ciudad Juárez.
The bodies of dead migrants are covered with blankets in the parking lot
It was one of the deadliest incidents in an immigration hold in the country.
“I’ve been here since 1 p.m. waiting for the father of my children, and when it struck 10 p.m., smoke started coming from everywhere,” the 31-year-old Venezuelan told Reuters.
Her husband, Eduard Caraballo, 27, was detained Monday by Mexican immigration authorities and placed in a holding cell inside the facility.
He managed to survive by spraying himself with water and pressing against a door as the fire raged, Infante said.
“Her chest hurt a lot, she was struggling to breathe because of all the smoke, but she didn’t get burned,” Infante said of her husband, who is now in a hospital.
The couple and their three children left Venezuela last October in search of better economic opportunities and a good education for their children, as well as to escape rampant crime.
In late December, they reached the US border and crossed into Eagle Pass, Texas, where they turned themselves in to US immigration authorities. But they were immediately returned to Mexico, where they were then taken by bus to Juarez City.
Recent weeks have seen a backlog of migrants in Mexican border cities as authorities try to process asylum claims using a new US government app known as CBP One.
Many migrants feel the process is taking too long, and clashes broke out earlier this month between US security and hundreds of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, at the border after frustration grew over securing asylum appointments.
The Mexican immigration detention center is in Juárez, which is across from El Paso, Texas.
Mexico’s migration law says that migrants can only be detained for 15 days under normal circumstances, although the Supreme Court ruled in March that such periods were unconstitutional and that migrants should not be detained for more than 36 hours.
In January, the Biden administration said it would expand Trump-era restrictions to quickly expel Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian immigrants caught crossing the US-Mexico border in an effort to contain border flows.
That came after a decision in October to expand removals, under a controversial policy known as Title 42, to Venezuelans.
At the same time, the United States said it would allow up to 30,000 people from those countries to enter the country by air each month.