MEXICO CITY - Migrants fearing deportation 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 deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country.Hours 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.Thirty-nine people died and 29 were injured and are in "delicate-serious" 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.President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the fire was started by migrants inside the facility in protest after learning they would be deported."They never imagined that this would cause this terrible misfortune," López Obrador said, adding that the director of country’s immigration agency was on the scene.Screengrabs from a video show the scene outside of a migrant facility in northern Mexico after it caught fire overnight on March 27-28, 2023.
Credit: Corrie Boudreaux via Storyful Tensions 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.