The fire was started by migrants who burned mattresses in protest of potential deportation, according to the president of Mexico.
Surveillance video shows Mexican detention centre guards did not help 38 migrants who died in a fire.
The fire broke out after migrants at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, close to the U.S.-Mexico border and El Paso, Texas, positioned mattresses against the cell bars and set them on fire.
The facility’s footage appears to show that no effort was made to liberate the migrants before smoke filled the room.
The film shows at least one migrant on the other side of the metal gate, surrounded by two uniformed officers.
However, it appeared that the officers made no effort to open the cell doors and instead fled as billowing clouds of smoke quickly filled the room.
The video’s authenticity was validated by Adan Augusto Lopez, Mexico’s interior secretary.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said migrants protesting deportation started the fire.
Mr. Obrador remarked, “They never imagined that this would lead to this terrible misfortune.”
After the fire, rows of corpses were laid out under silver sheets outside the center.
Authorities initially reported forty fatalities but subsequently stated that some may have been counted twice due to confusion.
According to the National Immigration Institute, twenty-eight individuals were injured and were in “serious-to-critical” condition.
The office reported 68 male Central and South American inmates at the time of the fire.
According to a statement from the Mexican attorney general’s office, immigration authorities identified the victims as hailing from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.
Cesar Jauregui, the state prosecutor of Chihuahua, told reporters that the deaths necessitated renting refrigerated trailers to store the migrants’ corpses.
When the fire broke out, Viangly Infante Padron, a 31-year-old Venezuelan woman seeking asylum in the United States with her spouse and three children, was waiting outside the detention center for her partner’s release.
She stated, “There was smoke everywhere.”
“The employees they let go were women and those with immigration status,” she said.
They never removed the men until the arrival of firefighters.
She reported seeing multiple corpses before locating her husband in an ambulance.
“I was desperate because I saw three dead bodies and couldn’t find him anywhere.”
In recent weeks, tensions reportedly ran high between authorities and migrants in Ciudad Juarez. Where shelters are full of people seeking US entry or asylum.
On 9 March, more than thirty migrant shelters and other advocacy groups published an open letter in which they criticized the criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers in the city.
It accused authorities of mistreating migrants and using excessive force in gathering them up, including complaints that municipal police questioned individuals on the street without justification about their immigration status.
Tuesday, migrant advocates stated that the immigration facility was overcrowded and that the fire site was confined and lacked ventilation.
The proponents’ statement stated, “It was foreseeable.” Mexico’s immigration policy is murderous.
Mexico has become the third most popular destination for asylum seekers in the globe, after the United States and Germany.
However, it remains primarily a country through which migrants pass on their journey to the United States.
