A fire at an immigrant-processing facility in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on March 27 killed 38 migrants and injured dozens more in one of the deadliest incidents along the Texas-Mexico border in recent years.
The fire occurred at the National Institute of Migration, where 68 men from Central and South America were being detained. Immigration authorities reported that the dead and injured migrants came from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, the Associated Press reported.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the fire was started by some of the migrants when they learned they were going to be deported. The AP reports increasing agitation and restlessness between authorities and migrants in crowded Ciudad Juarez shelters waited to cross into the United States.
Multiple news outlets, including the AP and the New York Post, published surveillance footage of the fire obtained by Noticias 26 Univision El Paso, which shows several guards fleeing the facility without attempting to rescue the migrants trapped behind locked gates. The Post reports at least two guards who are seen fleeing the burning facility "don’t even look at the migrants frantically trying to escape from the locked cell."
“The immigrants were under the custody of the Mexican government,” Texas Public Radio wrote in a March 28 Twitter post. “Mexico’s president claims the migrants started the fire but it appears more could have been done to save their lives.”
According to CBS News, more than 850 migrants died along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, a record high. The number of migrant deaths has risen for two straight years - the more than 500 deaths recorded in 2021 was a record at the time. These deaths also do not account for the number of deaths of migrants attempting to reach the U.S. border, such as the immigration facility fire, as the U.S. only counts those who died on U.S. territory.
Data from the Pew Research Center shows that the number of monthly encounters at the border between U.S. Border Patrol agents and migrants attempting to enter the United States reached over 200,000 in November 2022, exceeding the previous recent peak of May 2019 and nearing the peak reached in March 2000.
