Mexican authorities said on Wednesday that eight employees or officials are being investigated for possible misconduct at a migrant detention centre where a fire killed 39 detained men. Anger and frustration in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez boiled over as hundreds of migrants walked to a US border gate hoping to make a mass crossing.Mexican officials appeared to place blame for the deaths in the fire late on Monday largely on private, subcontracted security guards at the detention centre in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Video showed guards hurrying away from the smoky fire apparently without trying to free detainees. No charges were announced, but authorities said they would seek at least four arrest warrants later in the day, including one for a migrant who was part of what they described as a small group that started the fire. They said a migrant also damaged a security camera inside the cell where the fire occurred.
Five of those under investigation for possible misconduct are private security guards, two are federal immigration agents and one is a Chihuahua state officer, federal Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said. The investigation has centred on the fact that guards appeared to make no effort to open cell doors for the detained men — almost all from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador — before smoke filled the room in a matter of seconds.
The deaths caused frustration, and may have played a role in a mass march late Wednesday afternoon by hundreds of migrants, who began walking toward a US border crossing in the belief that American authorities would let them through. Adding to anger over the deaths was pent-up frustration of migrants who have spent weeks trying to make appointments on a US cellphone app to file asylum claims. Rumors spread among the migrants that they might be let in into the US. Jorman Colón, a 30-year-old Venezuelan migrant, walked hand-in-hand with his 9-year-old daughter, saying he had heard on social media that acquaintances had gotten through.
