Wilson Alexander Juárez Hernández died twice – his heart stopping for about five minutes in an ambulance and later for eight minutes in a hospital emergency room. He was brought back to life each time.
He sometimes questions if he’d be better off dead. The past two years, he’s had to relearn how to eat, walk and talk. His arms and legs don’t work like they used to. His speech is strained and slurred, every breath between words a battle.
The physical challenges are haunting reminders of the fire that nearly consumed him on March 27, 2023, when the migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez where he was being held became engulfed in flames and smoke. Forty migrant men died of smoke inhalation, their bodies flown to their home states in caskets draped in their country’s flags. Fifteen migrant women in a different cell were evacuated before the fire reached them. Wilson and 26 others survived with varying degrees of injuries ravaging their bodies.
But the wounds that cut the deepest are not the ones on his body; they are the questions smoldering inside him two years after the incident: Why had he survived when others had not? Why did this happen to him? Why does his road to recovery seem so endless?
Wilson, who recently turned 23, left his native Guatemala City, Guatemala, on March 1, 2023, leaving behind three younger sisters, his mother and his father, whom he says has a drinking problem and rarely provided for the family.
“Decidí arriesgar mi vida para ayudar a mi familia,” Wilson said in Spanish during a conversation with El Paso Matters this week. “I decided I’d risk my life to help my family.”
He arrived in Ciudad Juárez across the border from El Paso 14 days later. He was soon detained by law enforcement officers cracking down on migrants who at the time were arriving at the border by the tens of thousands. He was taken to the National Migration Institute detention center, which a collaborative of human rights organizations in Mexico reported as having a record of civil rights violations, including detaining migrants longer than allowed and not providing adequate food and water. Guards allegedly asked for bribes to release the migrants, many of whom couldn’t pay, and sold cigarettes, drugs and lighters to detainees.
In protest, on March 27, 2023, at least two detainees set their vinyl sleeping mats on fire and demanded to be released, court records show.
As the fire grew, smoke filled the holding cell. Wilson and others collapsed to the ground.
“Pensé, ‘Hasta aquí llegué,’” he said. “I thought, ‘This is as far as I go.’”
In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, medics worked for about five minutes to restart his heart. Some 30 emergency room doctors, nurses and other medical staff revived him again after his heart stopped for about eight minutes, hospital administrators said at the time.
For nearly three months, Wilson lay in critical condition at the Hospital General de Ciudad Juárez. He spent 13 days intubated and on a ventilator. He suffered renal failure and neurological damage.
Under humanitarian parole from the U.S. government, Wilson was transferred to University Medical Center of El Paso by ambulance in June 2023 to continue his medical care. His body had been mangled, his twisted legs and hands contorted in what doctors describe as a defensive fetal position. He lost significant weight, his body becoming dangerously weak and frail.
His father, who had traveled from Guatemala to Mexico to be by his side, was not granted parole and could not be with him in the United States. Neither could any of his other family members.
Once released from UMC, he was received at the Annunciation House migrant shelter network. With the help of private donations to the nongovernmental organization, Wilson received physical, occupational and speech therapy three times a week. He regained enough strength to move around with the help of a walker, and slowly started recovering his speech.
Wilson said that he doesn’t recognize himself sometimes.
“Yo era trabajador,” he said as his eyes welled with tears. “I was a hard worker.” In Guatemala, he harvested corn, rice, beans and sesame seeds in a campo, leaving school after sixth grade to work full-time. “(My dad) never gave us anything and I had to work for my family. That’s what I wanted to do here is work. Now look at me.”
Wilson sat on a red sofa chair in a small living space at Annunciation House on Monday. His body crouched over slightly. His fingers and legs remained somewhat stiff. His shy smile revealed his missing two front teeth, the dental bridge he had implanted in Guatemala was lost somewhere during his hospitalizations.
Dressed in a blue button-up dress shirt and a black cowboy hat, he was readying to participate in a Mass dedicated to migrants at Annunciation House. He presented an offertory gift – a blanket symbolic of migrants’ needs on their journeys.
He recalled his own trek: hot days and cold nights without cover, five days without food or water, a frightening ride atop “La Bestia” freight train used by Central Americans to traverse through Mexico. He watched people fall off the train, likely to their death, he said.
He thought himself lucky to be alive, and was planning to meet up with his grandmother and other relatives in Arkansas. But that all changed the night of the fire.
Two years later, the incident is still under investigation as cases against 10 of the 11 originally charged in the tragedy wade their way through the courts. A Mexican federal judge in January suspended criminal charges against Francisco Garduño Yáñez, Mexico’s top immigration official, who was accused of failing to comply with his obligation to protect facilities and migrants under his charge.
An investigation by El Paso Matters, La Verdad and Lighthouse Reports published in 2024 revealed a number of lapses in safety protocols at the center, including missing, misplaced or malfunctioning fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. The center lacked a sprinkler system, and access points to the cell where the men were held had been sealed off. The investigation also found an unhurried attempt by guards to find keys to the locks to free the men.
“A ellos no les vamos abrir,” a woman agent with the National Migration Institute in Juarez could be heard saying on security video obtained by the news outlets. “We’re not going to open (the cell) for them.”
Wilson said he recalls waking up in the hospital bed not sure where he was – or if he was alive. His mind raced.
“Yo pensaba muchas cosas. ¿Dónde estoy yo? ¿Dónde está mi futuro? ¿Qué hago yo aquí? ¿Aquí vine a morir? No quisiera estar vivo en esta condición.”
“I thought a lot of things. Where am I? Where is my future? What am I doing here? Did I come here to die? I wouldn’t want to live in this condition.”
Wilson works with Emergence Health Network therapists to tend to his mental health following the traumatic fire.
Wilson, who has authorization to work in the United States, has applied for asylum and is awaiting a court date. Along with other fire survivors, he has received some compensation from the Mexican government, which has helped him pay for some basic needs.
He attends tutoring at the Rio Grande Campus of El Paso Community College, where he is studying to take his GED in Spanish. Annunciation House is working with Workforce Solutions Borderplex for job placement that could accommodate his special needs and limitations.
On Sunday for the first time, he ventured out on his own to a flea market about a half-mile away, leaning on his walker to get him safely there and back.
Carol Zuccarino, 78, an Annunciation House volunteer who has worked with Wilson the past two years, said there’s times he’s motivated to move ahead – and other times he’s disconsolate about his life.
“You can see him want to exert his independence,” she said. “He’ll go around singing songs in English, moving around with his walker as if to dance. It’s amazing to see. Other times we really have to work to get him to think positively.”
Michael Jackson, Los Bukis and Whitney Houston are among the artists on Wilson’s playlist. Music grants him fleeting moments of happiness, if not a glimmer of hope.
“He goes through some really difficult times,” said Ruben Garcia, founder and executive director of Annunciation House, who has been working closely with Wilson. “He was a perfectly healthy, fine 20-year-old and now he’s here.”
Wilson has mostly lost touch with his family in Guatemala – and even those in Arkansas. They sometimes connect by phone, he said dismissively, adding he’s mostly “alone in life” except for his Annunciation House family.
Wilson has nothing but praise and gratitude for what the organization, its donors and especially its volunteers have provided him. When he first arrived, volunteers helped bathe him, dress him, feed him. They carried him when he couldn’t walk.
He acknowledges his progress on the road to recovery – but his mind remains restless.
“Lo único que yo quisiera es ser como yo era antes. Que yo estaría bien como antes,” he said. “The only thing I wish is to be like I was before. That I would be well as before.”
He said he often asks God why – if he’s not a criminal, never hurt anybody or much less, killed anybody – is he going through such challenges.
“¿Por qué a mí? ¿Por qué? ¿Por qué me tocó esto? ¿Por qué yo? ¿Por qué yo? ¡No es justo!”
“Why me? Why? Why did this happen to me? Why me? Why me? This isn’t just.”
Garcia, who founded Annunciation House in 1978, called those “God’s questions.”
“He’s going to have to navigate that for himself,” Garcia said. “That’s something that no therapist, no psychiatrist, no spiritual director is going to be able to give him. … It’s not something you can give someone – to discover the ‘why’ in our lives.”
Wilson’s future remains unclear, including how long he might remain under the care of Annunciation House. Garcia said like Wilson, he’s taking it one step at a time and is hopeful his Guatemalan guest finds his way.
“That would be my hope, that Wilson is able to discover the ‘why’ in his life.”
The post He died twice after the Juárez migrant center fire. Now he’s searching for life’s meaning. appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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