Homicide Charges Loom for 7 Officers Who Didn't Help Migrants Escape Deadly Fire

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mexican authorities are investigating seven officials and one migrant they say may be responsible for the deaths of at least 39 men who died during a fire while locked up in a government migrant detention center on Monday night. 

Authorities are considering filing possible homicide charges against two federal officers, two state employees, two sub-contracted security guards and one migrant for alleged misconduct that led to the fatal incident, Mexican top security chief, Rosa Icela Rodríguez announced during a press conference on Wednesday night.

“Some of these employees were not capable of opening up a gate. Who blocked these people from getting out? It is clear that this is a crime,” Rodríguez said. 

The tragedy has made headlines in Mexico and the U.S. and raised searing questions about how the incident was handled. The Mexican government came under fierce criticism after video footage from inside the facility leaked to the press showed that officials inside the Ciudad Juárez detention center made no effort to release the migrants as the roaring fire consumed the cell they were locked inside. 

Mexican authorities withheld the names of the officers and the migrant who are under investigation. Rodríguez said that the Mexican government issued at least four arrest warrants, including one against a migrant who allegedly peeled off electricity cables to start a fire, lit up a mattress, and then destroyed a security camera. 

At least three security guards contracted from a private company were guarding the cell along with two other employees from the Mexican Institute of Migration (INM), according to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The president accused the press of being “sensationalist” with their coverage of the tragedy. 

One of the INM officers in charge of the migrant center has been held in the local offices of the Attorney General’s Office in Ciudad Juárez for over 12 hours without contact with the outside, the officer’s family members told the local press on Wednesday night. 

The fire started at around 10 p.m. Monday night, according to the INM, which said that 68 adult men from Central and South America were being held there at the time. López Obrador said the fire was started as part of a protest by migrants who were angry that they would be deported, although an official investigation hasn’t been completed.

The morning before the fire, immigration authorities and state police carried out a raid in Ciudad Juárez and arrested dozens of migrants, according to witnesses. Many of the detained migrants with children were released just hours before the fire began. They said the cell was packed with men and women alike and smelled of “shit.” 

Mexico’s Attorney General’s office said that at the time of the fire there were 28 Guatemalans, 13 Hondurans, 12 Venezuelans, 12 Salvadorans, one Colombian, one Ecuadorian and one migrant who declined to share his nationality. At least 20 Guatemalan men died in the fire, according to Mexican and Guatemalan authorities. 

As of Thursday morning, many families and friends of migrants held in the detention center were still waiting to find out if their loved ones were among the dead or being treated at hospitals. 

The INM said Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission is being asked to intervene in legal proceedings and to “safeguard” the rights of the migrants. In a message on Twitter, the institute said it would give humanitarian visas to the migrants who were injured and cover their medical bills. 

Around 30 migrants have set up camp outside the offices of the INM in Ciudad Juárez, and flowers and banners have been laid out demanding justice for those who died in the fire. The tragedy has bought Mexico’s treatment of migrants, and the state of its detention centers, into sharp focus.