Immigrant detention facility fire in Juarez, Mexico kills 39; blaze started by inmates protesting deportation

Migrants protesting their pending deportation set mattresses on fire at a detention center miles away from the Mexico/U.S. border, igniting a massive blaze. The deadly fire killed at least 39 people and injured more than two dozen others.

“They never imagined that this would cause this terrible misfortune,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.

The fire broke out Monday night in the dormitory area of a facility run by the National Immigration Institute in Ciudad Juarez. The border city, located in Chihuahua state, is close to the Santa Fe International Bridge and across the border from El Paso, Texas.

It is a major crossing point for migrants entering the United States.

There were 68 men from Central and South America being held in the facility at the time of the fire, the agency said.

Rows of bodies were laid out beneath silver sheets outside the center while rescue teams, firefighters and local police remained on the scene on Tuesday. It marked the deadliest incident inside a Mexican immigration facility in recent history,

A total of 29 people were also injured in the fire. They were taken to four different local hospitals in “delicate-serious condition,” the agency said.

Mexico’s attorney general has initiated a formal investigation into the incident, and investigators were already on the scene. The government’s National Human Rights Commission was also called to provide assistance to those affected by the fire.

The immigration institute in a statement said it “energetically rejects the actions that led to this tragedy” but did not provide further details.

With News Wire Services