‘They Only Listen to Us When We Die’: Migrants Killed in Fire Were Locked in Jail Cell

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — As the fire blazed and suffocating smoke enveloped the cell, the men trapped inside begged their guards to unlock the door to let them out. But their pleas went ignored, according to damning security footage that suggests dozens of deaths could have been avoided in the deadly fire in a migrant detention center on Monday evening. 

The 30 second video, obtained by Mexican journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga and posted on his Twitter account, shows that Mexican authorities callously looked the other way as the roaring fire consumed the cell in the Ciudad Juárez detention center. The video does not clarify who set the blaze. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Tuesday that migrants set mattresses on fire when they learned they would be deported.

The tragedy, just feet from the U.S. border, could shine a light on Mexico’s hardline immigration practices as it seeks to appease the U.S.’s desire to stop the flow of migrants entering through its southwest border. The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has turned to Mexico to crack down on migrants before they set foot on U.S. soil. 

Venezuelan migrant Katiusca Márquez said she had been held in the detention center in Ciudad Juárez just hours before the tragedy. She stood outside the charred building holding her five-year-old son in her arms hoping for news about her brother, who was inside at the time of the fire.

There was one big cell where dozens of migrants were being held, she said. Its walls were painted white and people were crammed together, including crying children and men without clothes. It smelled of shit, said Márquez.

Juan Montes, also from Venezuela, said there were more than 100 migrants locked inside the cell—both men and women together. He had been picked up Monday morning while asking for money at a stoplight, he said. He and other migrants were held for 10 hours without food or water, he said, adding that he saw just three guards overseeing the entire center. “We kept asking, ‘why are we being locked up?’ And no one answered. They closed the locks and left us there for hours.”

Márquez and Montes were lucky. They were released around 6 p.m. on Monday evening because they had children, they said. Four hours later, the detention center caught fire and at least 40 migrants died—37 on the spot and three later in hospital, according to Mexican authorities. Another 28 are seriously injured.

On Tuesday morning, López Obrador blamed the migrants for causing the fire by setting mattresses alight, although an official investigation has not been completed. “They didn’t imagine that it was going to cause this terrible misfortune.”

Outside the detention center, dark streaks left by the smoke stained the white walls. The locks of a white metal door had been smashed by firefighters when they entered the building. The fire department was just three blocks away. 

The migrants who had been inside the center just hours before it caught fire said the conditions were miserable and questioned the government’s narrative. Marquez said authorities took all of her belongings from her at the center, including the shoelaces in her shoes.

“They take everything. How would someone enter with a lighter?” she asked indignantly. 

She said she had been panhandling on the streets of Ciudad Juárez on Monday morning with her son, who is five, when authorities swarmed the area. They forced her, her son, and brother into a van and took them to the migrant detention center. Authorities treated them like their “worst enemies,” she said. “Like criminals.” Her brother wasn’t released and she hadn’t heard whether he survived.

Orlando Ramos, a 19-year-old Venezuelan migrant, waited outside the center to see if he could get news about a friend who had been detained inside. 

“The Mexican government said that we started the fire. But they don’t ask why or what was happening before. They only listen to us when we die. But they never ask what we need, if we are doing okay, whether we are hungry,” said Ramos, who hadn’t been detained in the center. “Also, not a single one of the immigration officers died,” he said. “Isn’t that suspicious?”

Mexico’s Attorney General’s office said that it is investigating the “unfortunate events,” and that at the time of the fire there were 28 Guatemalans, 13 Hondurans, 12 Venezuelans, 12 Salvadorans, one Colombian, one Ecuadorian and one migrant who declined to share his nationality. The attorney general’s office said it has initiated an investigation into what happened.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute said Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission is being asked to intervene in legal proceedings and to “safeguard” the rights of the migrants. In a message on Twitter, the institute said it would give humanitarian visas to the migrants who were injured and cover their medical bills. 

López Obrador, who swept to power in 2018 promising to help migrants and safeguard their rights, has instead made it increasingly difficult for them to traverse the country under pressure from the U.S. The Biden administration, which is struggling to show it has control of its southwest border, has maintained many of the hardline Trump administration policies it promised to end.

In the 2022 fiscal year, U.S. authorities registered 2.4 million encounters at its southern border, a number that surpassed the previous year’s record of 1.7 million encounters. Many of those encounters are with migrants who attempt to cross multiple times.