JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Tuesday’s death of a homeless man presumably due to hypothermia has set off alarms in a border city with a large floating population of migrants.
“We urge everyone to stay warm, especially older adults and the young children, and also to monitor portable heating appliances […] If you detect a malfunction, turn it off or have it checked,” said Sergio Rodriguez, head of Juarez’s Civil Protection office.
KTSM weather forecast puts early Wednesday’s temperature at 26 degrees and the afternoon high at no more than 36 degrees.
Early Tuesday, Juarez police were called to a sidewalk in front of a business on Calle Galeana, where a man lay dead. A municipal police report states officers were told by witnesses they saw the man the previous night lie down to sleep where his body was later found. The official cause of death is pending.
Rodriguez said authorities later on Tuesday would be sweeping the streets to encourage people milling about the streets to go home or seek shelter.
About 50 individuals – 44 men and a woman – arrived or were taken to a municipal shelter near the Juarez monument park. Although authorities were concerned with any migrant or migrant families possibly not having a place to stay as temperatures dipped toward a freeze, all 50 individuals at the shelter identified themselves as Mexican nationals already in Juarez for some time.
Earlier in the day, a Honduran man who only identified himself as Bernardo, said he already is staying at a shelter and wasn’t too concerned about the cold. As he went into the community kitchen at Our Lady of Guadalupe Cathedral, he urged reporters trying to interview him to instead tell President-elect Trump not to close the border.
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