The disaster occurred late Monday, local time, at a facility in Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city bordering El Paso, Texas.
According to Mexican President López Obrador, the fire was started by migrants who set fire to mattresses in protest after learning they would be deported.
“They never imagined that it would cause this terrible accident,” López Obrador said.
Surveillance footage appears to show guards leaving the warehouse as the mattresses catch fire, with no apparent attempt to let the men out. The smoke then quickly filled the room.
— We’ve had this video since last night. But in order not to hinder the investigation, out of respect for the victims, we must be careful, says Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez about the images published in several media on Tuesday.
Relatives seek answers
About 100 migrants gathered on Tuesday outside the doors of the detention center to demand information about relatives. One of them was 23-year-old Katiuska Márquez from Venezuela, who together with her two children, aged two and four, were searching for her half-brother with whom they were traveling.
“We want to know if he is alive or if he is dead,” she told the AP news agency.
Márquez wonders how all the guards were able to get out alive and that only migrants died.
— How could they not get them out?
Anger grew outside the detention center on Tuesday, with relatives chanting demands for justice.
“Every migrant has the right to be safe, to be protected,” says Fran Martin Perez from Venezuela to AFP.
“Because we are not criminals,” he adds.
Calls for investigation
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a “thorough investigation” into the fire.
About 200,000 people try to cross the border from Mexico to the United States every month. Most are fleeing poverty and violence in Central and South America. Ciudad Juarez is one of the border cities where many undocumented migrants seeking to enter the United States are stranded.
Amnesty International calls the disaster “a consequence of the restrictive and cruel immigration policies of Mexico and the United States”.
“How is it possible that the Mexican authorities left people locked up without any way to escape the fire,” says Amnesty International’s Americas Director Erika Guevara Rosas.
The US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, says the tragedy is “a reminder to governments in the region of the importance of fixing a broken migration system and the risks of irregular migration.”
A girl from Venezuela lights a candle during a vigil for the victims of the fire disaster that claimed the lives of at least 38 migrants in Mexico.