Mexico Identifies 8 People Responsible For Migrant Center Fire

On Wednesday, Mexican authorities announced that the Attorney General’s Office will investigate at least five private security guards and three officials for negligence in the fire at a migrant holding center in Juarez City.

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"The Attorney General will conduct a serious and professional investigation and will hopefully find the whole truth," said Rosa Rodriguez, the secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC).

On Monday, about 68 Latin American migrants remained at the Juarez center due to complaints from local citizens, who claimed that migrants were asking them for money to survive while waiting for the U.S. to process their asylum applications.

At around 22:00, flames started at the center after some migrants allegedly set fire to mattresses in dormitories because they feared being transferred or deported to their countries of origin. Officers at the center immediately released 15 female migrants but did not do the same with male migrants.

A leaked video, whose authenticity the Mexican government confirmed, showed two security guards running out of the camera shot, leaving a migrant trapped in a cell where the smoke was spreading rapidly.

It is unclear whether the two security employees had the keys to the cell. Authorities, however, pointed out that they might have tried to break the lock if they did not have the keys.

"At the time of the fire, there were as many migration officials as guards at the center," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) confirmed, stressing that the National Migration Institute (INM) Director Francisco Garduño will state at trial.

"This tragedy hurts us all. The full burden of the law must fall on those responsible for it,” Ciudad Juarez mayor Cruz Perez said, recalling that 39 migrants died in this fire.