The Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) of Mexico reported this Tuesday that it will proceed criminally against the head of the National Institute of Migration (INM), Francisco Garduño, among other officials, for the death of 40 migrants in a fire inside a migration station in northern Mexico.
“Criminal proceedings have been taken against the directors of the INM, Francisco “N” and Antonio “N”, who engaged in alleged criminal conduct, by failing to comply with their obligations to monitor, protect, and provide security to the people and facilities in their charge. , propitiating the crimes committed against migrants,” the FGR said in a statement.
Mexican laws protect the identity of the people investigated. However, the Mexican press maintained that They are Francisco Garduño, director of the INM since June 2019, and Antonio González Guerrero, commissioner of the INM in Chihuahua, the state to which Ciudad Juárez belongs.
On the night of March 27, a fire at the INM center, in the border city of Juárez, killed 40 migrants, including six Hondurans, seven Salvadorans, 18 Guatemalans, seven Venezuelans and one Colombian, an incident that the Salvadoran government described as a “State crime” and for which he requested the removal of the headlines of Mexico’s immigration policy.
The Mexican Prosecutor’s Office determined “a pattern of conduct in which security measures have been omitted by those responsible.” that were indispensable and obligatory for these cases”.
This, after indicating that the function of the INM is the execution, control and supervision of all migration policies at the national level.
(You can read: A Colombian, among the victims of the fire in a migrant center in Mexico)
The FGR recalled that on March 31, just four days after the fire at the immigration station on the border between Mexico and the United States, another incident also occurred at an immigration center in Tenosique, Tabasco, in the south of the country, leaving a person dead and 14 injured.
Likewise, he explained that opinions of the Superior Audit Office of the Federation in recent years indicate, “with complete clarity, the faults and omissions that continue to be committed in the INM; and they indicate a pattern of irresponsibility and omissions that has been repeated and that has been the cause of these unfortunate events already mentioned.”
(You can read: Protests and vigil after fire in immigration center in Mexico)
So things, criminal proceedings will be taken against the public servants Salvador “N”, Juan “N”, Cecilia “N” and Eduardo “N”, which, he said, “are directly linked to the behaviors that generated the homicides and the injuries suffered by the victims of these crimes.”
For its part, it indicated that the private company in charge of security in the INM centers was given based on directly assigned public contracts, “omitting its public bidding obligations and generating costs double what is incurred in the public sector.” pay for those same services”. “
“They also failed to comply with their mandatory training, control and supervision obligations; and, even more, it has been shown that the company refrained from registering the vast majority of its dependents with the IMSS, which it tried to do days after the indicated events,” the FGR added.
In this sense, the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office determined that all these records show a “series of illegal and omissive behaviors” that are “fundamental elements that led to the commission of the crimes in question.”
Previously, The FGR had already reported the arrest of five people, including INM personnel and the private company in charge of security, which allowed him to obtain more data in his investigation of the case.
(Also: Officials did nothing to evacuate migrants during fire: Prosecutor)
This same Monday, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, admitted that the 40 migrants who died from this fire in a Mexican immigration center on the northern border of Mexico they could not escape because the person who had the key was not there.
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.
*With EFE and AFP
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