MEXICO CITY – New videos from inside the Mexico National Institute of Migration (INM) station on the Ciudad Juárez border show negligence by the officials in charge during the night of March 27, when 40 migrants died in a fire.
One month after one of the biggest migration tragedies in recent years in Mexico, the media leaked 16 minutes and 25 seconds of images showing the mistreatment migrants received at the government facility and the lack of reaction from the officers when the fire broke out.
The first images, which the Government has asked to deliver to the Prosecutor’s Office so that they are part of the official investigation, show dozens of migrants walking through a corridor of the detention center, all of them handcuffed, except one.
Although it is not appreciated that they are conventional wives, they are tied up and with their hands behind their backs.
At 12:26 local time (18:26 GMT), when there were still several hours left before the deadly fire broke out, the interior of the men’s cell is observed, in which about 50 men are crammed and lying on colored mats.
On the other side of the bars, a group of officials observe the scene, others talk to a few migrants posted on the fence. Several more foreigners enter the compound, but none leave.
That same day and the previous ones, according to the account of the migrants who are stranded in the border city waiting to cross into the United States, INM officials began raids to detain migrants, some of them with humanitarian or tourist permits. .
According to the official story, prompted by the state they were in, without water or food, the migrants started a protest when they found out they would be deported.
At 8:37 p.m. local time (02:37 GMT), after some final discussions with officials, the bars are completely covered by colored mattresses, and four minutes later the cameras only record a puff of smoke.
There is no trace of the officials, who ran away, nor of the migrants, swamped by smoke and fire.
There are also images of a room with bunk beds in which a dozen women were being held, who, upon noticing the fire, fled in terror. None of them died in the event.
While the tragedy was consummated inside, images of the entrance to the immigration station show a movement of officials and security agents, including several members of the Navy. The few that enter, leave in a matter of seconds.
The Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, said he was aware of the leaked videos, and urged the media that have published them to hand them over to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
“It must be part of the investigation of the Prosecutor’s Office (…). Evidence of responsibility is likely to emerge, be it from the officials or from the migrants,” he stated this Thursday at the government’s daily press conference, replacing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has COVID-19.
The first video that was leaked, a few days after the event, showed the moment in which the officials fled when they saw the fire, without opening the cell where the migrants who finally died were.
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