EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Human rights activists gathered late Thursday in Juarez, Mexico, to remember the 40 victims of a fatal fire at an immigration station and to renew their call for justice two years after the fact.
The March 27, 2023, blaze broke out after detainees burned mattresses inside a holding cell to pressure authorities to let them go. Toxic fumes quickly filled the building a few yards south of the Rio Grande; closed-circuit camera footage showed security personnel leaving the area rather than unlocking the cell. The one fire extinguisher in the building reportedly didn’t work.
“When a person decides to migrate, for whatever reason, (he or she) should not be subject to the death penalty,” El Paso Catholic Diocese Bishop Mark J. Seitz said at the vigil in front of the site. “Most migrants I met fled to seek protection […] like any of us would do in their situation. That is not a sin, that is not a crime.”
The activists hung signs and left mementos outside the gate of the National Migration Institute station, which stopped holding migrants after the tragedy. Later, they lighted candles on the sidewalk to remember the citizens of Central and South America who died in the fire.
“It’s been two years,” said Gabriela Avila, a member of Derechos Humanos en Acción. “It’s necessary to seek justice and remember that what happened here was the result of immigration policies; this situation could have been avoided.”
Eleven people, including INM Director Francisco Garduño, immigration agents and private security guards, were charged either criminally or administratively in connection with the fire and fatalities. No convictions have been announced.
A Venezuelan migrant, Jaison Daniel Catari Rivas, who is accused of starting the fire, remains jailed in Juarez on multiple charges of homicide and causing injuries to 27 others. His lawyer says his client is innocent and authorities misidentified the person who set fire to the mattresses to protest incarceration.
The Mexican government says it has paid about $11 million in compensatory damages to survivors of the fire and relatives of the dead.
(ProVideo in Juarez, Mexico, contributed to this report.)
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