The deaths of 39 men in a fire at a detention center in northern Mexico on Monday night have prompted sadness and frustration from migrant groups across the country, and in Chicago.
After detainees in Mexico placed mattresses against the bars of their detention cell and set them on fire, guards quickly walked away and made no apparent attempt to release them, surveillance video showed Tuesday.
Mexican officials appeared to place blame for the deaths in the fire late Monday largely on private, subcontracted security guards at the detention facility in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Mexican authorities said Wednesday that eight employees or officials are being investigated for possible misconduct at the detention center. The investigation is ongoing.
“We are very much concerned that the (Mexican) government’s intentions seem to be to blame this on a few individuals — including some of the detainees — and prosecute them, and then say this is over,” said Helena Olea, human rights lawyer and associate director for programs at Alianza Americas, headquartered in Chicago. “We know that there were no protocols, which resulted in this tragedy.”
On Friday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador visited hospitals treating injured migrants. Before the trip, he said he was going to set up a commission to ensure the human rights of migrants are protected. He said the commission would be headed by the Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, a longtime migrant activist and Catholic priest. But it was unclear what powers the commission would have.
Alianza works with local migrant organizations across the United States and in Chicago — providing legal services, training, work opportunities, housing and health resources. There are Alianza teams that work specifically to provide resources to the thousands of asylum-seeking migrants who have come to Chicago as part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s initiative to bus migrants to sanctuary cities since last August.
Alianza is also part of the effort to respond to the tragedy on the ground in Mexico, working with Grupo de Trabajo Sobre Política Migratoria, a network of organizations that defends the rights of migrants and people subject to international protection.
Olea said that when a government detains an individual, it then has the responsibility to protect the rights of that individual. This incident should not have occurred, she said.
The people at the center were part of a routine roundup in Juárez, where authorities detained people who had been begging in the streets, standing on street corners, offering to clean windshields. Both families and single adults were detained, but families were released from custody.
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.
Efecto Violeta, a Chicago-based organization that defends the rights of migrants, responded with an open letter the day after the fire. The letter calls on the Mexican government to revise its detention protocols in order to prioritize dignity and safety, among other demands.
Sandy Choreno, the director of Efecto Violeta, works directly with people from Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia. She explained that an incident like the Juárez fire has ripple effects on all migrant communities in Chicago.
“We are demanding justice because we are part of the same community, we are part of the same diaspora, and we need this kind of state crime to stop,” Choreno said.
Mexico has emerged as the world’s third-most popular destination for asylum-seekers, after the United States and Germany. But it is still largely a country that migrants pass through on their way to the U.S.
Adding to anger over the deaths was pent-up frustration of migrants who have spent weeks trying to make appointments on a U.S. cellphone app to file asylum claims. Rumors spread among the migrants that they might be let into the U.S.
Several hundred of the migrants crossed the shallow Rio Grande from Mexico toward the U.S. and approached a gate in the border fence that separates El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Armed agents stood guard at the U.S. gate entrance.
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Choreno said that both Mexico and the United States are culpable for what happened in Juárez on Monday night.
The United States offered to help provide medical care to the 28 individuals initially injured from the fire, according to Ruben García, director of Annunciation House, a nonprofit organization in El Paso that has offered hospitality to migrants and refugees for over 40 years.
“We’re still waiting to see what will come from that,” he said. “But 28 individuals is not that many.”
The migrants were stuck in Ciudad Juárez because U.S. immigration policies don’t allow them to cross the border to file asylum claims. But they were rounded up because Ciudad Juárez residents were tired of migrants blocking border crossings or asking for money.
García said that this may not be the only tragedy that results from the United States policies that relentlessly push people back and expel them.
“This is the perfect storm,” Olea said. “A tragedy like this is the reflection of the incapacity of Mexico to take care of migrants, and the application of a broken immigration policy.”
The Associated Press contributed.
