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CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mexican officers introduced on Wednesday that they have been investigating a hearth at a migrant detention heart in Ciudad Juárez as a murder case, saying that authorities employees and personal safety staff had not allowed detainees to escape from the blaze that killed no less than 39 folks.
The authorities, in a information convention, mentioned they’d recognized eight suspects, together with federal and state brokers, and would difficulty 4 arrest warrants on Wednesday.
“Not one of the public servants, nor the personal safety guards, took any motion to open the door for the migrants who have been inside the place the fireplace was,” mentioned Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra, a high federal human rights prosecutor.
The announcement got here after a video emerged showing to indicate that the migrants had been trapped when the fireplace broke out on Monday. Uniformed figures on the heart might be seen strolling away from the blaze whereas folks stay behind bars as the realm fills with smoke.
The authorities mentioned they may additionally examine one migrant suspected of beginning the fireplace.
“Our nation’s immigration coverage is one in all respect for human rights,” mentioned Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the authorities’s secretary of safety. “This unlucky occasion, which is the accountability of public servants and guards who’ve been recognized, is just not the coverage of our nation.”
It was a hanging growth in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny to the Mexican authorities’s dealing with of the surge of migrants flowing into the nation over the previous 12 months, looking for to enter the US.
Ciudad Juárez, simply throughout the border from El Paso, Texas, has lengthy prided itself on absorbing waves of newcomers, many from Mexico who come to work in factories and others from throughout Latin America who cease on their strategy to the US.
However what was a transit level for U.S.-bound migrants has become a hub for many who imagine they don’t have any selection however to remain — both after being despatched again by the U.S. authorities or whereas ready to use to enter legally.
At intersections throughout town, teams of migrants might be seen asking for cash. Some maintain up cardboard indicators pleading for assist. Others promote meals out of coolers.
Many sleep in deserted development websites or wherever else they’ll discover on the streets on this Mexican metropolis, draped in blankets and ragged sleeping baggage.
“Assist us eat and to stay awake on the street,” learn an indication held by Vicleikis Muñoz, 20, a Venezuelan lady in downtown Juárez who was eight months pregnant and touring together with her two youngsters, 5 and three.
“We survive from asking for cash,” she mentioned on Wednesday. “I don’t understand how for much longer I can do that.”
Migrants have tried to cross the border en masse, a transfer that has annoyed many residents who legally cross every day into El Paso to work. The mayor of Ciudad Juárez vowed a crackdown, whereas rights teams denounced abuses by the authorities.
These simmering tensions got here into sharp reduction on Monday night time, when the fireplace burned by the detention heart, which is federally operated. The Mexican president mentioned migrants had began the blaze throughout a protest, suggesting they have been indignant as a result of they’d discovered they’d be deported.
Viangly Infante Padrón, a Venezuelan migrant who has been in Ciudad Juárez since December, mentioned the authorities picked up her husband on Monday afternoon and took him to the detention heart.
She went there that day to attempt to get him out, and waited inside till about 9:30 p.m., when she heard a commotion coming from the place she believed the lads have been being held.
“I heard kicks and screams,” Ms. Infante Padrón mentioned in an interview, including that she heard one migration official say, “Take the ladies out.” Earlier than she was whisked exterior, she begged officers to free the lads.
“I began crying and I mentioned: ‘How is it that they’re burning? Why are you not opening the door?’” Ms. Infante Padrón mentioned. “They by no means opened the door for him, nothing.” She mentioned she waited exterior for quarter-hour earlier than firefighters arrived and began eradicating our bodies. Her husband, she mentioned, is now within the hospital.
Standing exterior a neighborhood college on Wednesday, the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, defended town authorities’s remedy of migrants.
“We’re being referred to as xenophobic and racist,” he mentioned. “It is a fully open authorities, and there’s no xenophobia on our half. We’re a metropolis of migrants.”
Analysts mentioned a turning level for Ciudad Juárez got here after President Biden, dealing with relentless Republican assaults over the surge in migration over the summer season, introduced a brand new coverage supposed to curb the document ranges of unlawful border crossings.
U.S. border officers had been seeing an explosion in crossings by Venezuelans, who couldn’t be deported by the American authorities due to strained relations with Venezuela.
In October, the Biden administration struck a cope with Mexico supposed to blunt the inflow: The US may expel Venezuelans to Mexico in alternate for creating authorized pathways for them to move into the US.
The variety of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally dropped inside days. The Biden administration noticed this as so profitable that it negotiated one other cope with Mexico to broaden the settlement to incorporate Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans — populations who equally couldn’t be simply expelled to their dwelling nations.
However Ciudad Juárez quickly began to see bigger numbers of Venezuelans and others gathering within the streets, residents and analysts say. Many have been in limbo — it was futile to attempt to cross into the US due to the brand new coverage, however they didn’t need to go dwelling.
So that they stayed.
“We handed right into a section we weren’t conversant in,” mentioned Rodolfo Rubio, a migration skilled and professor at El Colegio de Chihuahua, a public analysis establishment in Ciudad Juárez.
Mr. Rubio mentioned the sight of so many migrants begging at intersections and tenting on streets jolted some within the metropolis. Protests by Venezuelans, together with an effort by a big group shaped to hurry throughout the border this month, additionally put the authorities on alert.
The pressure in Ciudad Juárez has been mirrored throughout the north of Mexico, present and former officers say, because the Biden administration has made modifications in its border insurance policies.
This 12 months, the US created authorized pathways for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to use for a two-year humanitarian parole within the nation. The Biden administration additionally expanded entry to a authorities app, CBP One, for migrants to fill out an software and safe an appointment at a port of entry.
However to use through the app, a migrant should be in northern Mexico. Now, individuals are ready days and even months in Mexican border communities to safe an appointment, with solely a restricted variety of slots accessible.
At a shelter with about 800 migrants in Reynosa, Mexico, final week, solely two secured appointments, mentioned Guerline M. Jozef, a founder and government director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which helps folks looking for asylum.
“We do not need the capabilities to cope with this quantity of migrants,” mentioned Martha Bárcena, who was the Mexican ambassador to the US from December 2018 to February 2021.
The hearth, Ms. Bárcena added, “ought to make Mexico and the U.S. conscious that the measures which were agreed on should not working and they’re inflicting horrible tragedies.”
Steps away from the positioning of the fireplace, Carlos Armendáriz, who sells used instruments on the sidewalks in Ciudad Juárez, mentioned he sympathized with the victims and their households. However, he added, he had a blended view of the migrant inhabitants on the town.
“I’ll be frank,” he mentioned. “I don’t see them working. The bulk are begging.”
Mr. Armendáriz, 64, who was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, was a migrant himself for years in the US, working largely in development in Texas, till he was deported greater than a decade in the past.
Mr. Armendáriz mentioned that he had provided some migrants from Venezuela short-term work serving to to do repairs at his dwelling. However nearly none took him up on the provide, he mentioned.
“I used to be a migrant on the opposite facet,” he mentioned. “We went there to work like beasts.”
Mr. Armendáriz emphasised that he nonetheless considered Juárez as a welcoming metropolis, and that it had alternatives for anybody who needed to work arduous. “However solely 10 % of the brand new folks need to work,” he mentioned. “The opposite 90 %? I don’t find out about them.”
Some Venezuelans take difficulty with the notion that their presence is rising pressure within the metropolis.
“We work arduous each single day,” mentioned Jesus Cardoso, 29, a migrant from the Venezuelan state of Barinas. He and his spouse, Yitmar, 30, make arepas, a Venezuelan staple, to promote on the streets.
Mr. Cardoso mentioned they arrived a month in the past with their 4-year-old son, who’s enrolled in a public college in Ciudad Juárez. They’re hoping to reunite with kinfolk dwelling close to Houston.
“All we would like is an opportunity to cross the border,” he mentioned. “We don’t need to keep right here. But when we’ve got to, we’ll survive.”
Simon Romero reported from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Natalie Kitroeff from Mexico Metropolis; and Eileen Sullivan from Washington. Elda Cantú and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico Metropolis.
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