Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters that any actions that may have led to the deadly fire at a migrant detention center that claimed the lives of 38 men this week would not go unpunished.
“From the investigation it is clear that there was negligence, but we still need to know exactly what happened,” he said at a news conference Wednesday morning. “There will be no impunity.”
At the time of the fire, immigration officers and security personnel from a private company were present at the center, according to López Obrador.
The country’s prosecutor general is investigating in the event that charges may need to be brought, he said.
The fire that began Monday night inside the Estancia Provisional de Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, is one of the deadliest migrant tragedies near the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.
March 28, 202301:33
López Obrador has extended condolences to six Latin American countries following the release of the victims’ names and nationalities.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard has said his office has been in touch with leadership in the six countries “to report the tragedy that occurred in Ciudad Juárez and support their consulates to help victims and affected families.”
A 30-second video from inside the center posted on Facebook by Equipo De Rescate Cd Juárez, a local group that assists in emergency events, shows the fire as someone behind bars starts kicking the padlock in an attempt to open it. Two guards can be seen standing in front of the locked door, pacing back and forth, until black smoke covered the entire room.
On Tuesday, López Obrador said some of the detained migrants had put small mattresses at the door of the center and set them on fire “as a form of protest … after, we think, they found out they’d be deported.”
But the government’s version has received pushback from migrants in the area and immigrant and human rights groups that work with migrant families.
“This occurred inside a government-run facility in Mexico. They could have opened the cell to save a lot of people, but they didn’t do it,” Juan Pabón, a Venezuelan migrant in Ciudad Juárez, said.
At the news conference, López Obrador said, “We have preliminary versions, but we want to have all the elements,” adding that Mexican Public Safety Secretary Rosa Isela Rodríguez is expected to appear at a news conference Wednesday afternoon to give more details of the incident.
All of the people who died were men. Twenty-eight were from Guatemala, 13 were from Honduras, 13 others were from Venezuela, 12 were from El Salvador, one man was from Colombia, and another one was from Ecuador, officials said.
Suzanne Gamboa, Austin Mullen and Natalie Obregon contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
