At least 39 people died in a fire at a migration center in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, authorities said Tuesday.
Authorities said that the fire in the office of the National Institute of Migration (INM) occurred after they picked up some 71 migrants from the streets of the city.
Although the cause of the fire or the nationalities of the victims have not yet been revealed by the National Institute of Migration of Mexico, which launched an investigation, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that it began after a protest by migrants.
“What we know so far is that there were migrants from Central America and some from Venezuela in that shelter. We still do not know exactly the names and nationalities of those who unfortunately lost their lives,” López Obrador said during his usual morning press conference.
“This had to do with a protest that they started after, we suppose, they found out that they were going to be deported, and as a protest, they put mattresses from the hostel at the door of the hostel, and they set them on fire and they didn’t imagine that this was going to happen. cause this terrible accident,” he added.
López Obrador affirmed that all the authorities are deployed in Ciudad Juárez as part of the fire investigation.
