The fire in Ciudad Jurez shows inhumane conditions for migrants

The Firefighting at a Border City in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, revealed by a U.S. Immigration Official

The Immigration Department of Mexico said Wednesday that eight people are being investigated for their roles in the deaths of 39 men at a migrant center.

Anger and frustration in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez boiled over as hundreds of migrants walked to a U.S. border gate hoping to make a mass crossing.

No charges were announced, but authorities said they would seek at least four arrest warrants later in the day, including one for a migrant who was part of what they described as a small group that started the fire. They said a migrant damaged the camera in the cell that caught fire.

There are two federal immigration agents, one of whom is a public safety secretary, and private security guards under investigation. He said, Rodrguez.

In the video officials appear to ignore the men behind bars as well as the flames that are quickly consuming them. No agents attempts to free the men, some of whom can be seen kicking and yanking on a cell door before the screen is completely obscured by dense smoke.

A protest against the eviction of a Venezuelan migrant from the border crossings to U.S. asylum claims in Ciudad Juarez

There was anger caused by the deaths and migrants who’d been trying for weeks to get appointments on a US cellphone app to file asylum claims. There were rumors that some migrants could be allowed in the U.S.

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

A group of about 50 migrants initially approached a Border Patrol vehicle and personnel and sat or kneeled on the ground. About 25 of them were then led in single file through the gate into the U.S. and onto a white school-bus style vehicle that drove away.

Smoke began billowing out of the migrant detention center late Monday after a group of detained migrants set fire to foam mattresses, to protest what they thought were plans to move or deport them.

Immigration agents and security guards working for a private contractor were at the facility, according to President Lpez Obrador.

It was unclear if the two guards actually had the keys, but authorities suggested Wednesday that they should have gotten them or broken the lock — a highly difficult task, given the quick spread of smoke.

U.S. authorities have offered to help treat some of the nearly 30 people who are hospitalized in critical or serious condition, most apparently from smoke inhalation.

The migrants were stuck because the US didn’t allow them to cross the border to file asylum claims. But they were rounded up because Ciudad Juarez residents were tired of migrants blocking border crossings or asking for money.

In an open letter, dozens of migrant advocacy groups demanded that the city investigate what they called abuses by police and immigration officials. It accused authorities of abusing migrants and using excessive force in rounding them up, often to keep them from begging on the streets. The people were stopped by the municipal police without any reason. In some instances, the groups allege, police extorted and stole money from them and destroyed their documents.

After that, Ciudad Juarez Mayor Cruz Pérez Cuellar started campaigning to inform migrants there was room in shelters and no need to beg in the streets. He urged residents not to give money to them, and said authorities removed migrants intersections where it was dangerous to beg and residents saw the activity as a nuisance.

On Wednesday, the mayor told AP his office had not received any report of rights abuses of migrants in detention facilities. He insisted that his government shared no responsibility for what happened.

“It’s a terrible tragedy that pains all of us. He said that the authorities should take the full weight of the law on the people who didn’t open the doors for the migrants.

A video from a security camera shows immigration agents walking away as people are trapped in a locked cell during the fire at an immigration processing center in Ciudad Jurez.

In many respects the incident encapsulates what migrant advocates say are the inhumane conditions created in the border city due to decades of failed immigration policies by the U.S. and Mexico. Those conditions have only been exacerbated by Title 42, a Trump-era policy that invokes a public health rule to push asylum seekers out of the U.S. and into Mexico, regardless of whether they might qualify for asylum.

A Supreme Court ruling states that the policy will end on May 11. While the Biden administration has been pushing to end it, officials are rolling out plans that will continue to restrict migrant access to asylum if they show up at the southern border without first applying for refugee status in their country.

Tania Guerrero, a lawyer with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network who has worked in Juárez, told NPR that as the United States tightened asylum policies, the safety of migrants was deemphasized.

She added that the deadliness of Monday’s fire can be traced back to these policies, which have evolved to allow Mexican officials in Juárez to conduct regular roundups of mostly men and detaining them in makeshift facilities that were never intended to house migrants, including the center where the fire broke out.

“The U.S. and Mexican governments have prioritized the deterrence, the criminalization, the militarization, the discrimination versus the well-being of those seeking protection,” Guerrero said.

Since it was first implemented in 2020, the government has used Title 42 to expel migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border nearly 2.7 million times. The US government has created a situation in which they return people to Mexico daily, causing them to be stranded until they can cross again.

The United States wants Mexico to house asylum seekers in order for them to be able to reach safety.

The policies of today have changed nearly every facet of daily life in the city. The government’s new mobile application has made it difficult for people to apply for asylum as well as for food and money on corners, parks and plazas.

Howard Campbell, cultural anthropologist from the University of Texas El Paso, told NPR that there is an extreme vulnerability to the migrants that is not just to coyotes, but also from Mexican law enforcement.

Campbell is the author of Downtown Juárez: Underworlds of Violence and Abuse and has been researching and writing about the city for more than three decades.

The Case of Juárez, Argentina, where the United States Received 220,000 Cubans in the First Three Years of the Mexican Migrant War

“There are soldiers all over the place and especially close to the immigration area [nearest the border],” he said, adding that they walk around holding automatic weapons, or ride around on trucks mounted with machine guns.

The militarized presence has only intensified tensions on the ground. Campbell explained that people mostly from Venezuela are pushing up against that.

The National Guard, the National Migration Institute immigration police and about 50 local police officers tried to raid the hotel where the majority of Venezuela’s migrants reside on the day the letter was made public. Local news outlets reported that “the migrants, mostly young men, threw stones” at officials and a brawl ensued. Campbell said that the authorities eventually abandoned their mission.

He said that the demonstration had impacted the economies of Jurez, El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico, noting that the level of patience was running low.

Juárez has always served as a final stop along the path for people to the U.S. For much of Mexican history, that has meant mostly Mexicans from further south traveling through as they head for jobs in American factories or farm fields. Historically, Central and South Americans traveled to the US in smaller numbers until the last few decades.

Campbell said that the culture was created by the local population being at best indifferent and at worst welcoming to people passing through. That sort of attitude held steadfast even as massive caravans of migrants from Central and South America began appearing about six years ago.

“They stood out a great deal, because many of them actually established businesses in downtown quarters and had a kind of cultural presence in the city,” he said, adding that within their new enterprises many displayed Cuban flags and played Cuban music on the streets. That seemed to hurt people the wrong way.

The Cubans were no longer there suddenly. The United States received 220,000 Cubans for the fiscal year that ended in March. Not long afterward, Title 42 was expanded to apply to Cuban migrants.

By then, the majority of the asylum seekers were poor Haitians. Most of the people are dark skinned, have few resources and speak French and Creole so they don’t blend into the population.

Most recently, the city population has swelled with extremely poor Venezuelans. Campbell said local residents complain that they feel outnumbered by the South Americans, who they believe also look different and speak Spanish with very different accents.

Campbell believes that the situation is similar to what occurred in Europe a few years ago with people coming from Syria and other countries in the Middle East. “They are desperate people with no resources at all, mostly young women and men with children.”

The deluge has been so overwhelming that people who were once sympathetic are now saying that they are a drain on the local government, resources and the economy.

Campbell noted that the local media is filled with anti- Immigrant rhetoric. He said that there have been reports of foreign men harassing women.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1166947456/ciudad-juarez-detention-fire-conditions-migrants-treatment

Implications of the COVID-19 declarations for immigration and asylum seekers in Juárez, Mexico: the city’s mayor, a voice for migrant workers

Following the demonstration on the bridge a couple weeks ago, the mayor urged residents not to give money to migrants who are on the city’s streets, saying many don’t want to work because they get more money from panhandling.

The Secretary of Public Security said that women complained that they felt intimidated by migrants during their travels. He said there will be a campaign to fight sexual harassment of migrants.

With the end of the national COVID-19 emergency declarations in the U.S. about six weeks away, it is still unclear how things will change on the ground in Juárez, or if it will improve conditions for asylum seekers who have been trapped across the border.

The Biden administration has said it will deny entry to anyone who has not previously applied for asylum in other countries they may have passed through.

NPR reported that the administration is looking at reviving the practice of detaining migrant families for a short time if they are caught crossing the border illegally.