The death of between 38 and 40 migrants in an official detention center in Ciudad Juárez -the number has not yet been clarified- is being investigated as a case of homicide, the Mexican Prosecutor's Office announced on Thursday.
The public ministry acknowledged that the officials and private security employees of the National Institute of Migration (INM) of Ciudad Juárez did not allow the migrants locked up there last Monday to escape the fire that, supposedly caused by the inmates themselves in protest against their planned deportation. , ended the lives of a large part of them.
According to the special prosecutor for Human Rights Sara Irene Herrerías, the authorities have identified eight suspects in the possible crime, most of them federal and state agents.
Herrerías and the Minister of Security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, added that four arrest warrants would be issued against the possible perpetrators. The inquiries include a migrant suspected of starting the fire.
The announcement of the homicide investigation came hours after the broadcast of a video where you can see how some uniformed men walk away from the fire that is beginning to grow inside the INM facilities in Ciudad Juárez while, on the other side of a barred door and closed with a padlock, several people try to open it to escape the fire.
"None of the public servants and private security agents tried to open the door to the migrants who were already inside with the fire," the prosecutor said at a press conference.
On Tuesday, the day after the tragedy, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blamed the migrants themselves for the events, since they were the ones who caused the fire by burning some mattresses in the protest riot against their deportation.
