Without a clear migration policy, today Thursday marks one month since the fire in which 40 migrants died and 28 more were injured inside the provisional residence of the National Institute of Migration (INM) in Juárez, a city that has become the main Mexican border for irregular crossings into the United States.
Officially, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has charged 11 people for the incident, for which eight federal officials, a private security guard and a Venezuelan migrant are in custody.
Meanwhile, according to activists who support migrants, every day between 300 and 600 foreigners arrive aboard the cargo train, but most of them seek to cross the border in the following hours, for which they have perceived that the flow in Juárez has decreased in recent weeks.
Until yesterday, immigration agents Daniel GY, Rodolfo CT and Gloria RG had been linked to the process; Alan Omar PV, private security guard; Juan Carlos MC, Beta group coordinator; Eduardo MA, head of Material Resources at the immigration station; Salvador GG, head of the local INM representation in Chihuahua; and the Venezuelan migrant Jeison CV, while the agent Cecilia RT, assigned to the municipality of Ascensión, was released.
On the other hand, the national commissioner of the INM, Francisco Garduño Yáñez, and the general director of Immigration Control and Verification, Antonio Molina, are carrying out a free process, which has provoked the claim of activists who ask for a fair trial.
“We ask for justice for the victims, but without fabricating the culprits,” asked yesterday Pastor Miguel Ángel González Ponce, director of the Red de Albergues Somos Uno por Juárez, by supporting the work that the coordinator of the Group has done in favor of migrants. Beta.
The priest Francisco Javier Calvillo, director of the Casa del Migrante, lamented that while the head of the institution “goes in and out” (of the courts), officials who dedicated their work to the protection of migrants are in jail, such as Juan Carlos.
‘Forty sacrifices’
One month after the fire that occurred on the night of March 27, the INM type B provisional residence building still shows the traces left by the fire on its walls, while the altar in honor of the 40 victims remains on the outside, as a sign of mourning but also as a demand for justice.
“40 sacrifices for the dream of thousands of people”, reads in letters next to an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, two wooden crosses, a rosary, candles and photos of some of the victims, which are covered with a tent.
The migrants themselves are in charge of maintaining the altar on a daily basis, where until yesterday they had no action scheduled within the first month of the fire.
Tomorrow will mark one month of the camp that was set up outside the INM, which has become the daily stopover for groups of migrants who arrive in Ciudad Juárez to rest and then cross the Rio Grande, as well as the home of those who they hope to achieve a humanitarian exception to be able to enter the United States through an international bridge.
Among the latter are Abigail, 26, her husband, 31, and their 6-year-old daughter, who had to leave El Salvador on January 16 and more than 20 days ago they arrived in Ciudad Juárez aboard the freight train. .
Not finding a place in a humanitarian space, the Central Americans went to the camp, where for the first five days they slept with only a sheet, until a family managed to get an appointment to cross through Nogales and let them have their tent.
Since then, every day her husband goes to work at a job in the city center, while she waits in the camp in the care of her daughter, one of the approximately ten children and adolescents who were yesterday in the place, although they have added up to 30 minors, according to the migrants themselves.
“We are waiting for Title 42 to end on May 11. I don’t think the United States is going to open the border for us, but let’s see what processes it puts in place,” said Abril, telling that “Laura,” a Venezuelan migrant who decided to turn herself in to the Border Patrol, was already expelled by Tijuana with her two children. , but she was separated from her husband, whom they still do not know where they are going to return to Mexico.
As of yesterday, the camp had at least 113 canvas tents or improvised tents made of plastic or blankets, 94 of them located outside the Municipal Presidency and the INM sidewalk, and 19 more in the planters located next to the the Cadastre Office, on General Rivas Guillén street.
They cross the Bravo
According to Cristina Coronado, coordinator of the Ministry for Migrants of the San Columbano Missionary Society in Ciudad Juárez and in charge of the soup kitchen for migrants in the Cathedral, and Rosa Mani Arias, coordinator of the Red de Albergues Somos Uno por Juárez, there are currently in the city between 6,000 and 12,000 migrants seeking to reach the United States.
“Every day people arrive on the train,” but most arrive in the city looking for the “holes” or “doors,” such as “gate 36” (although now they have to advance to border marker number 40), he explained. Crowned.
A month ago, the Catedral dining room received more than 800 people daily, many of whom came regularly, while currently the figure is approximately 650 diners, most of whom have just arrived in the city.
“They keep coming, they come every day, they come to eat and then they go straight to the doors. Some decide to rest for one or two nights and then cross, but when families come they cross directly”, although it has also detected that other migrants with greater economic resources have arrived, who have grouped to rent houses or apartments in the city.
In recent weeks, many of the people who had been in the city for months also decided to cross the international river to turn themselves in to the agents of the El Paso Sector Border Patrol, which has maintained more than a thousand daily encounters with migrants throughout April. the border, hundreds daily through the so-called “gates” of the United States.
“There are people who are returning expelled to other borders, speaking to us. They have also released families in the United States, but the majority are entering and are taken on side flights to expel them, and the issue is that if a few are released, everyone believes that they are going to be released,” Coronado commented.
The activist explained that there is a lot of confusion among migrants who decide to cross the border irregularly, although others are already desperate to stay in the city and prefer to turn themselves in to US agents to try their luck.
Others have had to flee, such as a migrant who was approached by a car in which armed men were traveling, who threatened him, beat him and took his wallet, so that same night he decided to cross the border.
