MEXICO CITY (AP) — The head of the Mexican migration agency, Francisco Garduño, was on trial on Sunday for the crime of illegal exercise of public service and omission of obligations that would have resulted in the death of 40 migrants during the March fire in a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, in the north of the country.
Garduño will follow the trial in freedom and in his post. His lawyer, Rodolfo Pérez, told The Associated Press that an economic agreement is expected to be reached with the victims so that the process does not continue.
“Pay what you have to pay (because) this is a crime that if the damage is repaired… the trial will no longer continue,” he said by telephone.
Prosecutors had asked to remove him from office since the previous hearing, but the judge rejected the request and only decreed as a precautionary measure that he periodically go to court to sign.
“I will continue working at the National Migration Institute until otherwise ordered, and I will be very attentive to the efforts for comprehensive reparation for the damage,” Garduño himself told the press upon leaving the hearing in Ciudad Juárez, in which he reserved his right to testify.
The Prosecutor’s Office presented numerous documents that proved that one of Garduño’s functions was to safeguard and protect the migrants and the institute’s facilities, without prejudice to the fact that his subordinates also did so.
They said that there were documents that showed that since last year he had been aware of the poor conditions of the damaged detention center, without emergency protocols against fires and where the migrants were overcrowded, without ventilation and locked in a cell whose keys were never located in the time of the fire.
Forty migrants, the majority from Central America and Venezuela, died of suffocation and almost thirty were injured in the fire on March 27 at the detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, bordering the United States.
A small group of foreigners set fire to a mattress as a sign of protest against the conditions of detention and, in a matter of seconds, the smoke spread through the bedroom without any guard opening the cell to release them, as could be seen in the footage. the security cameras.
Garduño, who before arriving at Migration was in charge of Mexico’s prison system and has been close to the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for years, has had the support of the president up to now, who entrusted him with leading the hardening of the policy Mexican immigration since 2019 under pressure from former US President Donald Trump.
The senior official acknowledged to the press upon leaving the courts that the judge’s decision was not a surprise.
We already expected it,” confirmed his lawyer, who announced that they will appeal the judge’s decision. “The important thing was that he was free, (that) they did not dismiss him from office.”
Garduño’s defense stressed that those who failed on the day of the events were not the officials but the private company hired by the INM for the security of the facilities, and complained that the judge did not admit as evidence videos from the security cameras of the detention center. The magistrate did so due to a form problem.
The Prosecutor’s Office investigates the contracts of the immigration agency with the private company.
in part of those recordings that AP was able to review that had no sound, members of that company were in charge of opening and closing the cell where the fire took place hours before the fire. Then the keys to the men’s cell were lost, but the women were released by a private security guard and were saved.
The prosecutor’s office alleged that the security guards asked the Migration agents for permission to allow the migrants to leave and they were denied.
In several hearings, the lack of fire-fighting requirements, the improper existence of mattresses made of highly flammable material, the lack of registered migrants and their permanence in the place for several days was verified, although the Supreme Court considered it unconstitutional before the fire to stop the migrants. for more than 36 hours.
The courts have already opened criminal proceedings against another INM director for the same charges as Garduño and against six other officials for homicide and injuries, including the retired military man who was in charge of the INM in Chihuahua.
Others who are subject to prosecution are a private security guard and the migrant who allegedly started the fire, the deadliest event of its kind in Mexico’s history.
