At least 40 die in fire during protest at migrant center in Mexico

At least 40 migrants from Central and South America died after a fire broke out late on Monday at a migrant detention center in the Mexican northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, apparently caused by a protest over deportations, officials said Tuesday.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said authorities believed the blaze in the city opposite El Paso, Texas, broke out around 9:30 p.m. local time as some migrants set fire to mattresses in protest after discovering they would be deported. He did not provide more details about how so many had died in the incident.

People protest outside the National Institute of Migration building after a fire broke out late on Monday at a migrant detention center, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, March 28, 2023. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

“They didn’t think that would cause this terrible tragedy,” Lopez Obrador told a news conference, noting that most 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 are battling to cope with record levels of border crossings at their shared frontier.

A video shared on social media, which appears to be security footage from within the center, shows a flame in part of a cell which is filling up with smoke as men kick desperately on the bars of a locked door.

In the 30-second video, three people in what appear to be official uniforms walk past but make no attempt to open the door. By the end of the video the smoke is so thick the cell can no longer be seen.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the video.

Alejandra Corona, a representative of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) which visits the facility once a week to monitor conditions, confirmed the video showed the men’s cell. The door the men were kicking on was the only exit, she said.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute, which runs the center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twenty-eight of the dead were Guatemalans, Guatemala’s national migration institute said, while 13 were Hondurans, according to the country’s deputy foreign minister. It was not immediately clear why those totals differed from the death toll given by Mexican authorities.

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