Six arrest warrants have been issued in connection with a deadly fire at a government-run migrant detention center in Mexico that killed 39 men and injured 28 others this week, officials said Thursday evening.
The warrants were issued for three officials of the National Migration Institute, the agency running the detention center that burned down, two security guards working with a private company the agency contracted to work at the center and the person believed to have started the fire, Sara Irene Herrerías, an attorney with the prosecutor general’s office, which is leading the investigation, said at a news conference.
Herrerías said five of them have been arrested and are being indicted and arraigned on charges of “intentional homicide.”
Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez, who joined Herrerías at the news conference, said her office is assisting the investigation by the country’s prosecutor general.
The security guards who were in the detention center at the time of the fire work for a private company Rodríguez identified as Grupo de Seguridad Privada Camsa. The National Migration Institute hired the company in 2019 to provide 503 security officers across facilities in 23 Mexican states, Rodríguez said. But it had a security staff of fewer than 15 people, she added. It also lacked permits for its staffers to carry firearms.
Rodríguez said a request to revoke the company’s government contract has been filed. The company will also be fined, she said, without disclosing the amount.
Mexico’s federal protective service is set to take over the company’s responsibility in Ciudad Juárez, Rodríguez said.
The fire, which began Monday night in the Estancia Provisional de Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, is one of the deadliest migrant tragedies near the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.
Herrerías said Wednesday that migrants at the center had bunched up some small mattresses, protesting “about some inconveniences.” Some…
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