Detained Unto Death

"I was desperate because I saw a dead body, a body, a body, and I didn't see him [her husband, Eduard Caraballo Lopez] anywhere."

"There was smoke everywhere. The ones they let out were the women, and those [employees] with immigration. The men, they never took them out until the firefighters arrived."

"They alone had the key. The responsibility was theirs to open the bar doors and save those lives, regardless of whether there were detainees, regardless of whether they would run away, regardless of everything that happened."

"They had to save those lives."

Viangly Infante Padron, Venezuelan migrant, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Firefighters were at the scene trying to rescue people from the burning building   Reuters

 

 

"What humanity do we have in our lives? What humanity have we built? Death, death, death", officiating Bishop Mons. Jose Guadalupe Torres Campos mourned at a mass to memorialize the unfortunate migrants being held at a detention centre in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Both immigration agents and security guards from a private contractor were at the facility when it went up in flames and where 38 migrants died and 28 were seriously injured. 

 

An investigation that uncovered any misconduct, stated President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, would see the responsible punished.

Immigration agents had carried out a crackdown netting 67 migrants, among them Viangly Infante Padron's husband. Many of the migrants were asking for handouts or washing car windows at stoplights in the Rio Grande River city across from El Paso, Texas. Infante Padros expressed her shock in recounting witnessing immigration agents stream out of the detention centre once fire started in the building on Monday evening.

Following which she saw the bodies of migrants being carried out of the smouldering wreck on stretchers, each wrapped in foil blankets. victims of a blaze that appeared to have been set by detainees themselves, protesting news of their being returned from whence they came. Infante Padros's husband was not among the dead. The father of her three children sustained only slight injuries. It was serendipitous that he was scheduled for release and had been close to a door when the fire pandemonium erupted.

The catastrophe of so many lives lost seared the conscience of Mexicans, becoming a perplexing question of who was responsible. Why, they ask, did not the authorities involved make an effort to release the men -- almost all of whom were from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador -- before it was too late, leaving them to die of smoke inhalation once smoke from the fire filled the building and so many perished. 

Fifteen women were released -- according to immigration authorities -- when the fire broke out. No explanation was forthcoming to explain why no men were let out of the burning building. Migrants are shown on surveillance video leaked a day later, fearing their deportation, placing foam mattresses against the bars of their detention call, setting the mattresses on fire. Two people dressed in guard uniforms were seen in the video rushing into the camera frame. And while one migrant appeared by the metal gate on the opposite side, the guards failed to move to open the cell doors.

The guards hurried off as billowing clouds of smoke quickly began filling the building within seconds. The facility was operated by Mexico's National Immigration Institute which announced it was prepared to fully cooperate in the investigation. Full identification of the dead and injured is incomplete, although Guatemala stated that many of the victims were its citizens.