The death toll from Monday’s fire at a detention center for illegal immigrants in northern Mexico, which set immigrants’ mattresses on fire for fear of deportation, rose to 40, authorities updated.
Hours after the fire, one of the deadliest at a Mexican immigration prison, broke out, rows of bodies were dumped outside the facility in Ciudad Juárez, across the US border from El Paso, Texas, a point crossing for migrants.
As a result of the fact, of the 68 migrants who were there, 40 died and 29 were injured and in a “delicate-serious” state of health, according to the National Institute of Migration.
At the time of the fire, 68 men from Central and South America were being held at the facility, dead and injured from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, according to a statement from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Búcaro said that 28 of the dead were Guatemalan citizens.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the fire was started by immigrants in protest after learning they were going to be deported.
“They never imagined that this was going to cause this terrible misfortune,” López Obrador said.
The deaths forced the government to rent freezers to store the bodies, according to Chihuahua state prosecutor César Jáuregui.
Source: TSF
