Mexico City, Mar 29 (EFE).- Migrants and organizations demonstrated this Wednesday in Mexico City in solidarity with the 39 foreigners in transit who died on Monday due to a fire at an immigration station in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, state of Chihuahua, north of the country.
“This case is unfortunate. The people who died have children, they have mothers waiting for them, who only wish that they arrive safely (to the United States) and return (to their countries of origin) one day and they are not going to return,” he told EFE Nixon Montero, a Venezuelan migrant who is in the Mexican capital on his way to the United States.
Like him, several dozen migrants and members of civil organizations demanded justice before the Ministry of the Interior (Interior) of Mexico, the closure of the immigration station where the fire broke out that cost the lives of the migrants, mostly Venezuelans, and demanded Investigate until you find those responsible.
Montero described the migration journey to the United States as a complex path full of violence, especially in Mexico, he said.
“Those of us who undertake this journey are ready for it. We left and we don’t know if we will return again, ”he declared.
The Venezuelan insisted that people like him who decide to travel to the United States do not do so for “tourism”, but rather because of the difficulties in getting ahead in their countries of origin.
In Venezuela, he assured, it is impossible to get ahead and ensure that the family lives with dignity due to extremely low wages and excessively high prices.
That is why they even risk their lives to get to work in the United States and send money to their relatives.
For her part, Gabriela Hernández, coordinator of the Casa Tochan shelter, assured that “the immigration station and the (workers) who were there are murderers.” “There is no doubt about that,” she said.
Together with other activists and members of organizations, he demanded that it be determined that the deaths were the responsibility of the State, that relatives be given facilities to collect the bodies and “mainly” that those responsible be found.
In addition, after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called the immigration station a “shelter”, he insisted that they function as prisons in which migrants have not been given dignified treatment for years and are even held for more than 72 hours, something that is out of the law, he said.
“It is outrageous that he wants to compare a shelter with a migration station,” he added.
The people present there demanded to meet with a high official of the Ministry of the Interior to establish a working group and make sure that an investigation is carried out and that the damage is repaired.
The presence of migrants in the area has intensified this year since the United States announced new measures, including the immediate deportation of migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who arrive by land under Title 42.
The Mexican government has also faced criticism from human rights organizations for accepting US policies and deploying more than 20,000 elements of the Armed Forces at the borders for immigration tasks.
According to Mexican civil organizations, 2022 was the most tragic year for migrants in Mexico, as some 900 died trying to cross without documents from the country to the United States.
The region is experiencing a record migratory flow, with 2.76 million undocumented immigrants detained at the United States border with Mexico in fiscal year 2022.
