Nearly 40 dead in Mexico bomb shelter fire

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At least 39 people have been killed in a fire at a migrant reception center in northern Mexico. 29 other people were injured in the fire at the facility in the city of Ciudad Juárez on the border with the United States, the Mexican Immigration Service (INM) said Tuesday.

Authorities assumed that the migrants had just learned that they were about to be deported or transferred to another location. “They put mattresses in front of the property in protest and set them on fire,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 69, said in his daily press conference. The fire got out of control.

Escape poverty and violence

According to immigration authorities, 68 adult males from Central and South America were staying at the property at the time of the accident on Tuesday night (local time). “It is very sad that something like this is happening,” the president said. According to media reports, the migrants had been detained at several border crossings in Ciudad Juárez the day before. They had been taken to the migrants’ shelter to be later deported to their home countries.

Mexico is on the migratory route of people trying to reach the US. They are fleeing poverty, violence and political crises in their homeland. Between October 2021 and October 2022, the US Border Protection Agency recorded more than two million attempts by migrants to enter the United States. In addition to migrants from Central America, more and more people from Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba are also finding their way. (SDA)

Source: Blick