Five — either government migration officials, a detainee, or private security guards — were arrested last Thursday, March 30, and are facing charges for homicide and causing injury in the migrant facility blaze in Ciudad Juarez that claimed 39 lives and injured over 29 on Monday, March 27. 

This came after Mexican authorities issued six arrest warrants for the alleged individuals in connection with the blaze, which include three National Immigration Institute officials, two contracted security guards, and one migrant accused of igniting the fire, according to Mexican federal prosecutor Sara Irene Herrerías, who is leading the investigation. 

Mexico’s Federal Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said 27 migrants were still hospitalized in either serious or critical condition. Another migrant had been discharged, she said. 

The migrant accused of starting the blaze suffered minor injuries and has already been released from the hospital, and in all likelihood, is one of the five who were arrested. 

The victims — almost all from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador — were taken to the center and detained after residents complained about people begging for money on the streets. 

Icela Rodríguez said last Wednesday that officials were investigating at least eight people for possible misconduct and that the tragedy would be investigated as a homicide, after surfaced security footage the day before showed officials walking away from the blaze just as it was starting to grow, leaving the migrants behind. 

Smoke quickly filled the room just seconds after the guards left the frame with the feed cutting off soon after. It was not clear whether those guards had keys to the cell doors.

That same Wednesday, March 29, a complaint was filed with federal investigators from the federal Attorney General's Office accusing the state's top immigration official of ordering workers that the detainees not be released despite knowing about the fire. 

Filed by lawyer Jorge Vázquez Campbell, it alleged retired Navy Rear Admiral Salvador González Guerrero, the Chihuahua state delegate for the National Immigration Institute, "gave the order by way of a phone call that under no circumstances should the migrants 'housed' inside the place where the fire started be released.

According to Herrerías, the investigation will go into the leadership team of the facility to determine what actions or oversight are punishable by law. 

As for the arrest warrant for the sole migrant who was said to have been a part of the group of detainees who initially sparked the fire, he set fire to mattresses reportedly in protest of learning that they’d be deported. 

According to Campbell, one of his clients told him that one of the detainees asked a guard for a cigarette and a lighter before five migrants who had been detained that day began to protest.

“The officials made fun of them, they got irritated and then two of them set a mattress on fire,” he said. 

It was then, according to Campbell, that the federal agents contacted Gonzalez to alert him of the situation when Gonzalez allegedly ordered and "told them not to do anything and under no circumstances should they let them leave."

As of publication, no evidence has surfaced regarding that accusation. 

As for the two private security guards contracted by the agency, Rodríguez said the private security firm involved, identified as Grupo de Seguridad Privada CAMSA, had a federal contract to provide security at immigration facilities in 23 states. 

Rodríguez said the Mexican government found several irregularities within CAMSA and that its contract with the migration authorities would be terminated, its operating permit revoked and face a fine. 

And now, 48 federal agents will take over security at migrant facilities like the one in Ciudad Juarez and in the Mexican state of Chihuahua — the largest in Mexico. 

On top of investigating the chain of command at the facility as well as the fire itself, investigators will also look at several factors that led to the tragedy, including how the fire started, why foam mattresses are used in such facilities since they are extremely flammable, why the door was not unlocked, and the location of the keys, that were reportedly lost. 

Mexican officials also declined a U.S. offer to treat the injured at hospitals across the border in El Paso, Texas — perhaps a guilt offer for not addressing the immigration system, and implementing and keeping U.S. policies that create loops for asylum seekers. 

U.S. policies, which have evolved to allow Mexican officials regularly to gather mostly men and detain them in facilities never meant to house migrants, including the center in question in Juarez and that also force thousands of displaced people to some of the country’s most dangerous border cities, effectively leaving them to their own devices so that they can try to cross again where they are they are subject to kidnapping, extortion and violence.

Overwhelmed shelters in Juárez have also strained the fragile system currently in place that is unable to deal with the influx of new arrivals and if their life is already not tough enough. 

As for the tragedy itself, it is not the worst, nor the only. 

Since 2010, there have been over 12 tragic instances, with two already in 2023. 

Texas, March 2023:

Two migrants suffocated as they rode on a freight train, with roughly 15 others needing medical care. 

February 2023:

A bus carrying migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and Central America crashed in Mexico's central Puebla state, killing 17. 

September 2022:

Nine migrants died as they tried to cross the Rio Grande River. 

June 2022:

Fifty-three migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador died inside a summer sweltering tractor trailer in Texas; the deadliest migrant-trafficking incident on record in the U.S.

December 2021:

Fifty-five people were killed after a truck carrying an estimated 166 migrants crashed in Mexico's southern Chiapas state. 

September 2021 and February 2020:

Four Cuban migrants died when their van overturned on a highway in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, according to Mexican media and state authorities. 

August 2021:

Around 30 people crashed in Texas several miles from a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint, killing 10. 

March 2021:

Thirteen migrants from Mexico and Guatemala died when a vehicle packed with 25 people collided with a tractor-trailer a few miles north of the border. 

June 2019:

Seven migrants, including a woman, two babies and a toddler, died from extreme summer heat and dehydration after crossing the Mexican border into Texas. 

August 2013:

Roughly six migrants were killed when a cargo train derailed in the state of Tabasco. 

2010:

Seventy-two migrants from Central America were murdered in the San Fernando area of the northern state of Tamaulipas.