Report challenges official details of deadly fire at migrant center in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — An investigative report released before the first anniversary of a fire at an immigration center in Ciudad Juárez that killed 40 migrants challenges the government's version of what happened and shows a series of security protocol failures.

According to Mexican authorities, the fire on March 27, 2023, started when a group of detained migrants began burning their mattresses in protest of overcrowded conditions and a lack of food and water. Security videos leaked shortly after the incident appear to show smoke coming out of a cell while immigration agents fled without helping the detained migrants.

The incident is still being investigated, and nine of the 11 people charged in the case await trial while they remain in prisons in Ciudad Juárez.

In April 2023, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the person who had the keys to the cell where the fire took place was not at the facility at the time.

But the cross-border report by the investigative sites Lighthouse Reports, El Paso Matters and the Juárez, Mexico-based La Verdad contradicts the government's account, which was also questioned after the deadly fire.

“The keys were always in the building,” the report states.

The media outlets said they had access to 16 hours of security camera footage, both outside and inside the station, and thousands of pages of documents, including court affidavits and other records.

The report's investigators asserted that, throughout the day of the fire, several officials opened and closed the cell “and the next door with two sets of keys.”

A 25-year-old Guatemalan migrant named Estuardo told the report's investigators: “How could the key be missing. ... Just moments before they had opened the cell door.”

Noticias Telemundo contacted the Mexico's National Institute of Migration (INM) for comment on the investigation’s findings and report. A spokeswoman for the institute said that “at the moment there will be no position on the matter.”

“There are too many irregularities," Rocío Gallegos, director of the newspaper La Verdad and co-author of the investigation, told Noticias Telemundo. "During the day, groups of more than 100 migrants came and went. In an audio recording, we heard someone say that there were no fire extinguishers, but they were there. The place did not have ventilation and there were no smoke detectors that worked. All of this was a death trap for the migrants who died there.”

Several survivors interviewed for the investigation confirmed previous reports that migrants lacked food and water, were kept locked in an overcrowded cell, and were verbally abused and threatened with deportation, according to the report.

Doralvys, a Venezuelan woman who was released along with her husband hours before the fire, said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo last year that “when we arrived, they separated the men and women. They left us in a separate space, but they locked the men behind a fence. My husband didn’t want to be put there, he resisted a lot and that’s why they hit him. They mistreated us very badly, and at 5 in the afternoon they released us. Then we saw that the men who were trapped there, many of them died from the flames."

In one of the videos analyzed by investigators that had sound, a woman in an INM uniform is heard sending text messages while she said, “We are not going to open (the cell) for them, I already told those guys.”

Francisco Garduño Yáñez, INM's commissioner, has been charged with criminal conduct for failing in his responsibility to protect migrants. Eight other INM officials and private security guards are charged in the case because prosecutors have stated that the incident showed a “pattern of irresponsibility.”

The detention center closed after the fire and Garduño announced last May that it would be replaced by a new building near the Ysleta-Zaragoza international bridge, about 24 kilometers (about 15 miles) to the east and would be overseen by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). An opening date has not been announced.

Last year, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, Mexico's secretary of security, reported that “the process began to revoke the permission of the company Grupo de Seguridad Privada Camsa S.A de C.V,” the company hired by the INM to guard its detention centers in several states.

Eunice Rendón, an academic and international consultant on migration issues, said private companies should not be in charge of control and supervision tasks in these immigration facilities.

“These types of facilities are high risk. You have to be very careful and it is not possible that they are leaving it in the hands of private parties,” Rendón said.

According to the investigation, 29 survivors of the fire received expedited temporary humanitarian parole from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Mexican government, through the INM, proposed reparations to the victims’ families. Last July, funds were approved for each of the families of the 40 men who died in the fire, though human rights groups said the funds were insufficient.

“Until now, monetary reparations have focused on the families of the deceased. Reparation is lacking for survivors who, in many cases, still have no contact with the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims," said Blanca Navarrete, director of Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción, an organization in Ciudad Juárez that provides services to migrants. "Unfortunately, history in Mexico shows us that many years have to pass before people can enjoy a little justice."

A version of this article was first published in Noticias Telemundo.

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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com