Mexican authorities said Wednesday that eight employees or officials are being investigated for possible misconduct at a migrant detention center where a fire killed 39 detained men.
Anger and frustration in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez boiled over as hundreds of migrants walked to a U.S. border gate hoping to make a mass crossing.
Mexican officials appeared to place blame for the deaths in the fire late Monday largely on private, subcontracted security guards at the detention center in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Video showed guards hurrying away from the smoky fire apparently without trying to free detainees.
No charges were announced, but authorities said they would seek at least four arrest warrants later in the day, including one for a migrant who was part of what they described as a small group that started the fire. They said a migrant also damaged a security camera inside the cell where the fire occurred.
Five of those under investigation for possible misconduct are private security guards, two are federal immigration agents and one is a Chihuahua state officer, federal Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez. said
The investigation has centered on the fact that guards appeared to make no effort to open cell doors for the detained men — almost all from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador — before smoke filled the room in a matter of seconds.
The deaths caused frustration, and may have played a role in a mass march late Wednesday afternoon by hundreds of migrants, who began walking toward a U.S. border crossing in the belief that American authorities would let them through.
Adding to anger over the deaths was pent-up frustration of migrants who have spent weeks trying to make appointments on a U.S. cellphone app to file asylum claims. Rumors spread among the migrants that they might be let in into the U.S.
Jorman Colón, a 30-year-old Venezuelan migrant, walked hand-in-hand with his 9-year-old daughter, saying he had heard on social media that acquaintances had gotten through.
“We want to turn ourselves in,” Colón said, referring to the first step in the asylum process.
Several hundred of the migrants crossed the shallow Rio Grande from Mexico toward the U.S. and approached a gate in the border fence that separates El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Armed agents stood guard at the U.S. gate entrance.
Venezuelan migrant Victoria Molina, 24, complained that “the app never gives us an (appointment) date.”
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