More than thirty migrants died in one of the bloodiest occurrences ever at a Mexican immigration detention facility near the US border after a dormitory caught fire, according to a government agency on Tuesday.
Rows of victims were spread out outside the building in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, Texas, hours after the fire started late on Monday. Firefighters, ambulances, and mortuary trucks descended upon the area.
According to the National Immigration Institute, there were 40 fatalities and 29 injuries, with 29 of them being in “delicate-serious” condition.
The facility was housing 68 guys from Central and South America at the time of the incident, according to the agency.
That was the most fatal occurrence to have occurred recently inside a Mexican immigration institution. The government’s National Human Rights Commission was contacted to assist the migrants as authorities looked into the source of the fire. Without providing any further information on the activities that may have caused this catastrophe, the agency just said that it “energetically opposes” them.
There have sometimes been riots and demonstrations in the nation’s immigration detention facilities.
At a Tijuana immigration center in October, mostly Venezuelan migrants rioted, which required the intervention of police and National Guard soldiers. Many migrants rioted in November at Mexico’s biggest detention facility in Tapachula, close to the Guatemalan border.
