The victims of a fire inside a Mexican migrant detention center Monday night were trapped behind padlocked doors at an overcrowded jail that filled with smoke as they fruitlessly yelled for help.
At least 40 people died as result of the fire inside Estancia Provisional de Ciudad Juárez, where they were detained.
It is estimated to have a capacity of 60 people, said Blanca Navarrete, the director of Comprehensive Human Rights in Action in Ciudad Juárez. Authorities have said at least 68 people were killed and injured in the facility. In addition, about a dozen women had been detained at the facility right before the fire broke out, Navarrete said.
Human and immigration rights advocates said that while they were horrified by the deaths, they were not surprised that such a tragedy occurred in one of Mexico’s detention facilities.
“We’ve been working hard to limit this detention, because this is exactly the kind of thing that happens,” said Gretchen Kuhner, the director of the Mexico-based group Women in Migration. “The Mexican government tries to call them other things, but people are detained there, under lock and key, and they cannot leave. … I’ve been here for 25 years in Mexico, and we’ve been working on the sickening cases that we have.”
A 30-second video from inside the center posted on Facebook by Equipo De Rescate Cd Juárez, a local group that assists in emergency events, shows the fire starting to consume the center as someone behind bars starts kicking the padlock in an attempt to open it. Two guards can be seen standing in front of the padlocked door, pacing back and forth.
The upper floor of the immigration processing center in Ciudad Juárez served as a detention jail. While Kuhner hadn’t been in the Juárez one, she said, other detention centers she has seen are spaces that have been converted from immigration offices into jails, so they don’t usually have adequate facilities.
“They should have limits on the number of people…
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