✞ Descanse en Paz ✞
🔥 Surveillance footage from inside the immigration detention center in northern Mexico near the U.S. border where 38 migrants died in a dormitory fire appears to show guards walking away from the blaze and making no apparent attem…
✞ Descanse en Paz ✞
🔥 Surveillance footage from inside the immigration detention center in northern Mexico near the U.S. border where 38 migrants died in a dormitory fire appears to show guards walking away from the blaze and making no apparent attempt to release detainees.
The fire broke out when migrants fearing deportation set mattresses ablaze late Monday at the National Immigration Institute, a facility in Ciudad Juarez south of El Paso, Texas, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.
Authorities originally reported 40 dead, but later said some may have been counted twice in the confusion. Twenty-eight people were injured and were in “delicate-serious” condition, according to the National Immigration Institute.
The security footage, which was broadcast and later authenticated by a Mexican official to a local reporter, shows at least two people dressed as guards rush into the frame, then run off as a cloud of smoke quickly filled the area. They did not appear to attempt to open cell doors so migrants could escape the fire.
Authorities were investigating the fire, the institute said. The country's prosecutor general has launched an investigation, Andrea Chávez, federal deputy of Ciudad Juarez, said in a statement. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission also was alerted.
Migrants and activists gathered outside an immigration centre in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where at least 40 people died in a fire to call for justice after CCTV was released appearing to show guards leaving the building while smoke filled a locked cell with detainees inside. Human rights groups have blamed poor conditions and overcrowding for the fire. The Mexican president has said the fire, which broke out late on Monday, was caused by migrants setting fire to mattresses after discovering they were being deported. Activists have frequently called for better conditions in detention centres as the US and Mexico attempt to cope with record levels of border crossings.
