40 dead in fire at Mexico migrant facility, video shows guards walk away from locked cells

At least 40 migrants from Central and South America died after a fire broke out at a government-run migrant detention centre in the border city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico on Monday night.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute runs the centre and at the time of the blaze, there were 68 men held at the facility. In addition to the 40 who died, 28 others were hospitalised after being injured in the blaze.

The migrants placed mattresses against the bars of their detention cell and set them on fire, reported news agency AP. Damning CCTV footage shows security guards walking away and making no move to release the men from their cells as the flames spread and smoke filled the room.

The authenticity of the video, now being shared widely on social media, was confirmed by Mexico’s interior secretary Adan Augusto Lopez.

According to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the migrants were believed to have lit the fire as a protest because they feared they would be deported. On the other hand, a federal official told the LA Times that the migrants were protesting because they had been packed into a small cell and had no access to drinking water all day.

Viangly Infante Padron, a 31-year-old Venezuelan migrant seeking asylum in the US with her husband and three children, told AP, “There was smoke everywhere. The ones they let out were the women, and those (employees) with immigration,” she said. “The men, they never took them out until the firefighters arrived.”

Immigration authorities identified the dead and injured as being from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, according to a statement from the Mexican attorney general’s office. Guatemala Foreign Affairs Minister Mario Bucaro said 28 of the dead were Guatemalan citizens.

Anger boiled outside the detention facility on Tuesday, with relatives chanting demands for justice.

“Every migrant has the right to be safe, to be protected, even by migration,” said Fran Martin Perez from Venezuela.

“Because we’re not criminals,” he added.

Activists have frequently flagged concerns of poor conditions and overcrowding in detention centers as migration has risen.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement that the secretary-general called for a “thorough investigation” of the tragic event.