The fire in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, caused by a private security guard and a U.S. citizen who tried to make a mass crossing

The Mexican government appeared to blame private security guards for the deaths in the center of Ciudad Juarez, which was destroyed by a fire late Monday. The guards rushed away from the fire without trying to release the prisoners.

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.

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.

Private security guards, immigration agents, and a Chihuahua officer are among those under investigation for possible violations of the law. Rodríguez said.

In the video, later confirmed by the government, two people dressed as guards rush into the camera frame, and at least one migrant appears by the metal gate on the other side. The guards hurry away as billowing clouds of smoke fill the structure and don’t seem to make any attempt to open the cell doors.

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. There were rumors among the migrants that they might be allowed into the U.S.

Jorman Coln walked with his 9-year-old daughter and said he knew that acquaintances had gotten through on social media.

U.S. officials said Wednesday night that a total of about 1,000 migrants had crossed the river and were being processed in an orderly manner. It was unclear if they would be allowed to remain or if they would be taken to a border crossing for expulsion.

The smoke attack on a Ciudad Juarez migrant detention center on the 28th day of July 14: a tragedy that grieves

Smoke began billowing out of the migrant detention center late Monday after a group of detained migrants set fire to foam mattresses, to protest what they thought were plans to move or deport them.

The president said Immigration agents and security guards from a private company were present at the facility.

It was unclear if the two guards actually had the keys, but authorities suggested Wednesday that they should have gotten them or broken the lock — a highly difficult task, given the quick spread of smoke.

U.S. authorities have offered to help treat some of the nearly 30 people who are hospitalized in critical or serious condition, most apparently from smoke inhalation.

The migrants had been stuck in Ciudad Jaurez because the U.S. immigration policies wouldn’t allow them to file asylum claims. But they were rounded up because Ciudad Juarez residents were tired of migrants blocking border crossings or asking for money.

Earlier this month, dozens of migrant advocacy groups urged the city to investigate what they deem abuses by police and immigration officials in an open letter. Authorities rounded up migrants to keep them from begging on the streets, and it accused them of abusing them. It said municipal police stopped people without cause to question them about their immigration status. The groups say that police destroyed their documents and extorted money from them.

After that, Ciudad Juarez Mayor Cruz Pérez Cuellar started campaigning to inform migrants there was room in shelters and no need to beg in the streets. He urged residents not to give money to them, and said authorities removed migrants intersections where it was dangerous to beg and residents saw the activity as a nuisance.

The mayor told the AP that his office had not received any reports of rights abuses of migrants. He insisted that his government shared no responsibility for what happened.

“It’s a terrible tragedy that pains all of us. We are grieving,” he said, adding that authorities should “come down with the full weight of the law on those responsible – the people that for instance, didn’t open the doors for the migrants.”

The video may show people in a locked cell as immigration agents walk away from the scene of the fire.

In many respects the incident encapsulates what migrant advocates say are the inhumane conditions created in the border city due to decades of failed immigration policies by the U.S. and Mexico. Those conditions have only been exacerbated by Title 42, a Trump-era policy that invokes a public health rule to push asylum seekers out of the U.S. and into Mexico, regardless of whether they might qualify for asylum.

The Supreme Court ruled the policy is due to end on May 11. While the Biden administration has been pushing for an end to it, officials are rolling out plans that would continue to restrict migrants’ access to asylum for those who show up at the southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through.

As the United States tightened its asylum policy, the safety of migrants was reduced, according to a lawyer with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.

She added that the deadliness of Monday’s fire can be traced back to these policies, which have evolved to allow Mexican officials in Juárez to conduct regular roundups of mostly men and detaining them in makeshift facilities that were never intended to house migrants, including the center where the fire broke out.

The US and Mexican governments have prioritized deterrence, criminalization, militarization, discrimination and well-being of those who seek protection.

Since it was first implemented in 2020, the government has used Title 42 to expel migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border nearly 2.7 million times. A loop has been created in which the US government returns thousands of people every day to dangerous border cities in Mexico, leaving them stuck until they can cross again.

The United States is pushing for other countries and Mexico in particular to house and make it hard for asylum seekers to reach safety.

The ripple effects of the current policies have transformed nearly every aspect of daily life in the city, particularly the downtown area. The new government app has bugs that have made it hard for people to get asylum appointments, and people are begging for food and money on the streets.

“What stands out is the extreme vulnerability of the migrants – not just to coyotes who want to exploit them but from Mexican law enforcement, too,” Howard Campbell, a cultural anthropologist from the University of Texas El Paso, told NPR, using the term for human smugglers.

Campbell has been researching and writing about the city for more than three decades, and he is the author of Downtown Juez: Underworlds of Violence and Abuse.

The city of Juárez, El Paso and Las Cruces: a cultural revolution in the coming era of the U.S.

“There are soldiers in the area and close to the immigration area, carrying machine guns or holding automatic weapons, and riding on trucks,” he said.

The militarized presence has only intensified tensions on the ground. “And that’s what people, mostly the Venezuelans, are pushing up against,” Campbell explained.

In one instance, authorities raided a church and dragged away a group of people who had been given sanctuary there. Campbell said some of the people were beaten and tortured.

“The truth is that our patience level is running low,” he said, noting that the demonstration had impacted the economies of Juárez, El Paso and Las Cruces, N.M.

There has always been a final stop for people on their way to the U.S. Mexicans from further south have traveled through to get jobs in American factories or farm fields. In the past, South Americans have been in the city for a long time but have been much smaller in recent decades.

Campbell thinks that created a culture where the local population have been indifferent towards those passing through. The attitude was steadfast even as caravans of migrants from Central and South America began appearing a long time ago.

“They stood out a great deal, because many of them actually established businesses in downtown quarters and had a kind of cultural presence in the city,” he said, adding that within their new enterprises many displayed Cuban flags and played Cuban music on the streets. “That just seemed to annoy people the wrong way.”

Then suddenly, the Cubans seemed to vanish. In the next four years, more than 200,000 Cubans are expected to move to the U.S. Title 42 was expanded after that so Cuban migrants could be covered.

They were replaced by a large number of poorer asylum seekers. Most of them are dark skinned and don’t blend in as much because they don’t have much resources and speak Creole or French.

Most recently, the city population has swelled with extremely poor Venezuelans. Campbell said locals feel outnumbered by the South Americans, who look different, and speak Spanish with different accents.

The situation is very similar to what happened in Europe in the last few years when people came from the Middle East. “They are desperate people with no resources at all, mostly young women and men with children.”

The deluge has been so overwhelming that people who were once sympathetic are now saying that they are a drain on the local government, resources and the economy.

Campbell noted that anti-immigrant rhetoric is also spilling over into the local media. He said there is a rise in stories of foreign men harassing women.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1166947456/ciudad-juarez-detention-fire-conditions-migrants-treatment

The Juárez-Biden protest: migrant families in the shadow of the COVID-19 general declarations and immigration laws

Following the demonstration on the bridge a couple weeks ago, the mayor urged residents not to give money to migrants who are on the city’s streets, saying many don’t want to work because they get more money from panhandling.

The municipal Secretary of Public Security César Omar Muñoz Morales said that women have complained about feeling “intimidated by migrants” when they’re traveling along. He said the campaign will focus on migrants and harassment.

With the end of the national COVID-19 emergency declarations in the U.S. about six weeks away, it is still unclear how things will change on the ground in Juárez, or if it will improve conditions for asylum seekers who have been trapped across the border.

The Biden administration, which expanded Title 42 to expel Venezuelans and deport Haitians, has said it will deny entry to any asylum seekers who have not previously applied for asylum in another country.

The administration is considering whether to revive the practice of holding migrant families for short periods of time if they crossed the border illegally, according to NPR.