Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide Case

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mexican officials announced on Wednesday that they were investigating a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez as a homicide case, saying that government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape from the blaze that killed at least 39 people.

The authorities, in a news conference, said they had identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

“None of the public servants, nor the private security guards, took any action to open the door for the migrants who were inside where the fire was,” said Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra, a top federal human rights prosecutor.

The announcement came after a video emerged appearing to show that the migrants had been trapped when the fire broke out on Monday. Uniformed figures at the center can be seen walking away from the blaze while people remain behind bars as the area fills with smoke.

The authorities said they might also investigate one migrant suspected of starting the fire.

“Our country’s immigration policy is one of respect for human rights,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the government’s secretary of security. “This unfortunate event, which is the responsibility of public servants and guards who have been identified, is not the policy of our country.”

It was a striking development in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny to the Mexican government’s handling of the surge of migrants flowing into the country over the past year, seeking to enter the United States.

Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, has long prided itself on absorbing waves of newcomers, many from Mexico who come to work in factories and others from across Latin America who stop on their way to the United States.

But what used to be a transit point for U.S.-bound migrants has turned into a hub for those who believe they have no choice but to stay — either after being sent back by the U.S. authorities or while waiting to apply to enter legally.

At intersections across the city, groups of migrants can be seen asking for money. Some hold up cardboard signs pleading for help. Others sell food out of coolers.

Many sleep in abandoned construction sites or anywhere else they can find on the streets in this Mexican city, draped in blankets and ragged sleeping bags.

“Help us eat and to not sleep in the street,” read a sign held by Vicleikis Muñoz, 20, a Venezuelan woman in downtown Juárez who was eight months pregnant and traveling with her two children, 5 and 3.

“We survive from asking for money,” she said on Wednesday. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

Migrants have tried to cross the border en masse, a move that has frustrated many residents who legally cross daily into El Paso to work. The mayor of Ciudad Juárez vowed a crackdown, while rights groups denounced abuses by the authorities.

Those simmering tensions came into sharp relief on Monday night, when the fire burned through the detention center, which is federally operated. The Mexican president said migrants had started the blaze during a protest, suggesting they were angry because they had found out they would be deported.

Viangly Infante Padrón, a Venezuelan migrant who has been in Ciudad Juárez since December, said the authorities picked up her husband on Monday afternoon and took him to the detention center.

She went there that day to try to get him out, and waited inside until about 9:30 p.m., when she heard a commotion coming from where she believed the men were being held.

“I heard kicks and screams,” Ms. Infante Padrón said in an interview, adding that she heard one migration official say, “Take the women out.” Before she was whisked outside, she begged officials to free the men.

“I started crying and I said: ‘How is it that they’re burning? Why are you not opening the door?’” Ms. Infante Padrón said. “They never opened the door for him, nothing.” She said she waited outside for 15 minutes before firefighters arrived and started removing bodies. Her husband, she said, is now in the hospital.

Standing outside a local school on Wednesday, the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, defended the city government’s treatment of migrants.

“We are being called xenophobic and racist,” he said. “This is a completely open government, and there is no xenophobia on our part. We are a city of migrants.”

Analysts said a turning point for Ciudad Juárez came after President Biden, facing relentless Republican attacks over the surge in migration over the summer, announced a new policy intended to curb the record levels of illegal border crossings.

U.S. border officials had been seeing an explosion in crossings by Venezuelans, who could not be deported by the American authorities because of strained relations with Venezuela.

In October, the Biden administration struck a deal with Mexico intended to blunt the influx: The United States could expel Venezuelans to Mexico in exchange for creating legal pathways for them to pass into the United States.

The number of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally dropped within days. The Biden administration saw this as so successful that it negotiated another deal with Mexico to expand the agreement to include Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans — populations who similarly could not be easily expelled to their home countries.

But Ciudad Juárez soon started to see larger numbers of Venezuelans and others gathering in the streets, residents and analysts say. Many were in limbo — it was futile to try to cross into the United States because of the new policy, but they did not want to go home.

So they stayed.

“We passed into a phase we weren’t familiar with,” said Rodolfo Rubio, a migration expert and professor at El Colegio de Chihuahua, a public research institution in Ciudad Juárez.

Mr. Rubio said the sight of so many migrants begging at intersections and camping on streets jolted some in the city. Protests by Venezuelans, along with an effort by a large group formed to rush across the border this month, also put the authorities on alert.

The strain in Ciudad Juárez has been mirrored across the north of Mexico, current and former officials say, as the Biden administration has made changes in its border policies.

This year, the United States created legal pathways for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to apply for a two-year humanitarian parole in the country. The Biden administration also expanded access to a government app, CBP One, for migrants to fill out an application and secure an appointment at a port of entry.

But to apply via the app, a migrant must be in northern Mexico. Now, people are waiting days and even months in Mexican border communities to secure an appointment, with only a limited number of slots available.

At a shelter with about 800 migrants in Reynosa, Mexico, last week, only two secured appointments, said Guerline M. Jozef, a founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which helps people seeking asylum.

“We do not have the capabilities to deal with this amount of migrants,” said Martha Bárcena, who was the Mexican ambassador to the United States from December 2018 to February 2021.

The fire, Ms. Bárcena added, “should make Mexico and the U.S. aware that the measures that have been agreed on are not working and they are causing terrible tragedies.”

Steps away from the site of the fire, Carlos Armendáriz, who sells used tools on the sidewalks in Ciudad Juárez, said he sympathized with the victims and their families. But, he added, he had a mixed view of the migrant population in town.

“I’ll be frank,” he said. “I don’t see them working. The majority are begging.”

Mr. Armendáriz, 64, who was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, was a migrant himself for years in the United States, working largely in construction in Texas, until he was deported more than a decade ago.

Mr. Armendáriz said that he had offered some migrants from Venezuela temporary work helping to do repairs at his home. But almost none took him up on the offer, he said.

“I was a migrant on the other side,” he said. “We went there to work like beasts.”

Mr. Armendáriz emphasized that he still viewed Juárez as a welcoming city, and that it had opportunities for anyone who wanted to work hard. “But only 10 percent of the new people want to work,” he said. “The other 90 percent? I don’t know about them.”

Some Venezuelans take issue with the perception that their presence is increasing tension in the city.

“We work hard every single day,” said Jesus Cardoso, 29, a migrant from the Venezuelan state of Barinas. He and his wife, Yitmar, 30, make arepas, a Venezuelan staple, to sell on the streets.

Mr. Cardoso said they arrived a month ago with their 4-year-old son, who is enrolled in a public school in Ciudad Juárez. They are hoping to reunite with relatives living near Houston.

“All we want is a chance to cross the border,” he said. “We don’t want to stay here. But if we have to, we’ll survive.”

Simon Romero reported from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Natalie Kitroeff from Mexico City; and Eileen Sullivan from Washington. Elda Cantú and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.