Activists put up indicators Wednesday as they protest exterior a migration detention middle in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a day after dozens of migrants died because of the fireplace.

Christian Chavez/AP

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Christian Chavez/AP

Activists put up indicators Wednesday as they protest exterior a migration detention middle in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a day after dozens of migrants died because of the fireplace.

Christian Chavez/AP

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Mexican authorities stated Wednesday that eight staff or officers are being investigated for attainable misconduct at a migrant detention middle the place a fireplace killed 39 detained males.

Anger and frustration within the northern border metropolis of Ciudad Juarez boiled over as a whole lot of migrants walked to a U.S. border gate hoping to make a mass crossing.

Mexican officers appeared to position blame for the deaths within the hearth late Monday largely on non-public, subcontracted safety guards on the detention middle in Ciudad Juarez, throughout the border from El Paso, Texas. Video confirmed guards hurrying away from the smoky hearth apparently with out making an attempt to free detainees.

No expenses had been introduced, however authorities stated they’d search a minimum of 4 arrest warrants later within the day, together with one for a migrant who was a part of what they described as a small group that began the fireplace. They stated a migrant additionally broken a safety digicam contained in the cell the place the fireplace occurred.

5 of these underneath investigation for attainable misconduct are non-public safety guards, two are federal immigration brokers and one is a Chihuahua state officer, federal Public Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez stated.

The investigation has centered on the truth that guards appeared to make no effort to open cell doorways for the detained males — nearly all from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador — earlier than smoke stuffed the room in a matter of seconds.

The deaths brought about frustration, and should have performed a job in a mass march late Wednesday afternoon by a whole lot of migrants, who started strolling towards a U.S. border crossing within the perception that American authorities would allow them to by means of.

Including to anger over the deaths was pent-up frustration of migrants who’ve spent weeks making an attempt to make appointments on a U.S. cellphone app to file asylum claims. Rumors unfold among the many migrants that they could be let in into the U.S.

Jorman Colón, a 30-year-old Venezuelan migrant, walked hand-in-hand along with his 9-year-old daughter, saying he had heard on social media that acquaintances had gotten by means of.

“We need to flip ourselves in,” Colón stated, referring to step one within the asylum course of.

A number of hundred of the migrants crossed the shallow Rio Grande from Mexico towards the U.S. and approached a gate within the border fence that separates El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Armed brokers stood guard on the U.S. gate entrance.

Venezuelan migrant Victoria Molina, 24, complained that “the app by no means offers us an (appointment) date.”

A gaggle of about 50 migrants initially approached a Border Patrol car and personnel and sat or kneeled on the bottom. About 25 of them had been then led in single file by means of the gate into the U.S. and onto a white school-bus fashion car that drove away.

U.S. officers stated Wednesday night time {that a} whole of about 1,000 migrants had crossed the river and had been being processed in an orderly method. It was unclear if they’d be allowed to stay or be bussed to a proper border crossing for expulsion.

Smoke started billowing out of the migrant detention middle late Monday after a bunch of detained migrants set hearth to foam mattresses, to protest what they thought had been plans to maneuver or deport them.

Immigration authorities stated they launched 15 ladies when the fireplace broke out, however haven’t defined why no males had been set free.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated Wednesday that each immigration brokers and safety guards from a personal contractor had been current on the facility.

Additionally Wednesday, Pope Francis supplied prayers on the finish of his normal viewers for many who died within the “tragic hearth.”

Leaked surveillance video exhibits migrants, reportedly fearing they had been about to be moved, inserting foam mattresses in opposition to the bars of their detention cell and setting them on hearth.

Within the video, later confirmed by the federal government, two individuals dressed as guards rush into the digicam body, and a minimum of one migrant seems by the steel gate on the opposite aspect. However the guards do not seem to make any effort to open the cell doorways and as a substitute hurry away as billowing clouds of smoke fill the construction inside seconds.

It was unclear if the 2 guards really had the keys, however authorities recommended Wednesday that they need to have gotten them or damaged the lock — a extremely tough job, given the short unfold of smoke.

U.S. authorities have supplied to assist deal with among the practically 30 people who find themselves hospitalized in essential or critical situation, most apparently from smoke inhalation.

The migrants had been caught in Ciudad Jaurez as a result of U.S. immigration insurance policies do not enable them to cross the border to file asylum claims. However they had been rounded up as a result of Ciudad Juarez residents had been uninterested in migrants blocking border crossings or asking for cash.

“There have been a number of complaints from neighbors a few group of migrants, we do not know if it was this group or one other, that was allegedly appearing aggressively, asking individuals on the street for cash, demanding it,” stated Rodríguez.

The excessive stage of frustration in Ciudad Juarez was already evident earlier this month when a whole lot of principally Venezuelan migrants tried to pressure their method throughout one of many worldwide bridges to El Paso, appearing on false rumors that the US would enable them to enter the nation. U.S. authorities blocked their makes an attempt.

After that, Ciudad Juarez Mayor Cruz Pérez Cuellar began campaigning to tell migrants there was room in shelters and no must beg within the streets. He urged residents to not give cash to them, and stated authorities eliminated migrants intersections the place it was harmful to beg and residents noticed the exercise as a nuisance.

On Wednesday, the mayor instructed AP his workplace had not acquired any report of rights abuses of migrants in detention amenities. He insisted that his authorities shared no accountability for what occurred.

“It is a horrible tragedy that pains all of us. We’re grieving,” he stated, including that authorities ought to “come down with the total weight of the regulation on these accountable – the folks that for example, did not open the doorways for the migrants.”