MEXICO CITY, 28 Mar: Migrants fearing deporta-tion set mattresses ablaze at an immigration detention center in northern Mexico, starting a fire that left 39 dead, the president said Tuesday following one of the the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country.
\nHours after the fire broke out late Monday, rows of bodies were laid out under shimmery silver sheets outside the facility in Ciudad Juarez, which is across from El Paso, Texas, and a major crossing point for migrants. Ambulances, firefighters and vans from the morgue swarmed the scene.
\nThirty-nine people died and 29 were injured and are in \u201cdelicate-serious\u201d condition, according to the National Immigration Institute. There were 68 men from Central and South America held in the facility at the time of the fire, the agency said. A Guatemalan official said many may have been from that Central American country.
\nPresident Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador said the fire was started by migrants inside the facility in protest after learning they would be deported.
\n\u201cThey never imagined that this would cause this terrible misfortune,\u201d L\u00f3pez Obrador said, adding that the director of country\u2019s immigration agency was on the scene.
\nTensions between authorities and migrants had apparently been running high in recent weeks in Ciudad Juarez, where shelters are full of people waiting for opportunities to cross into the U.S. or who have requested asylum there and are waiting out the process.
\nMore than 30 migrant shelters and other advocacy organizations published an open letter March 9 that complained of a criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers in the city. It accused authorities of abuse and using excessive force in rounding up migrants, complaining that municipal police were questioning people in the street about their immig-ration status without cause.
\nThe high level of frustration in Ciudad Juarez was evident earlier this month when hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants acting on false rumors that the United States would allow them to enter the country tried to force their way across one of the international bridges to El Paso. U.S. authorities blocked their attempts.
\nThe national immigr-ation agency said Tuesday that it \u201cenergetically rejects the actions that led to this tragedy\u201d without any further explanation of what those actions might have been.
\nIn recent years, as Mexico has stepped up efforts to stem the flow migration to the U.S. border under pressure from the American government, the agency has struggled with overcrowding in its facilities. And the country\u2019s immigration lockups have seen protests and riots from time to time.
\nMostly Venezuelan migrants rioted inside an immigration center in Tijuana in October that had to be controlled by police and National Guard troops. In November, dozens of migrants rioted in Mexico\u2019s largest detention center in the southern city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala. No one died in either incident.
\nMexico has emerged as the world\u2019s third most popular destination for asylum-seekers, after the United States and Germany, but is still largely a transit country for those on the way to the U.S. It holds tens of thousands of migrants in an expansive network of detention centers and attempts to closely monitor movements across the country in cooperation with American authorities.
\nKarla Samayoa, spokes-woman for Guatemala\u2019s Foreign Ministry, said that Mexican authorities had informed them that more than two dozen of the migrants who died appeared to be from the country.
\nAsylum-seekers must stay in the state where they apply in Mexico, resulting in large numbers being holed up near the country\u2019s southern border with Guatemala. Tens of thous-ands are also in border cities with the U.S., including Ciudad Juarez. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MEXICO CITY, 28 Mar: Migrants fearing deporta-tion set mattresses ablaze at an immigration detention center in northern Mexico, starting a fire that left 39 dead, the president said Tuesday following one of the the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. Hours after the fire broke out late Monday, rows of bodies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-213793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}