Female migrants were freed, men left to die in deadly Mexico facility fire

As Mexican authorities continues to investigate Monday’s fire at a detention center turned migrant processing center in Juarez, Mexico, new details have emerged suggesting that while 15 women were freed by security personnel, an estimated 38-40 men were left to die behind padlocked doors.

The new revelations were first reported by the Dallas Morning News after video surfaced Tuesday depicting Mexican immigration officials and security personnel abandoning migrants as the fire blazed through detention cells.

In that video, later published by a local human rights group on Facebook, security personnel are seen departing from the facility while leaving the panicked men behind as they desperately tried to kick open their padlocked cell doors.

There are conflicting reports as to how the fire got started. In his initial press conference, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he believed some migrants set fire to mattresses in a cell to protest their potential deportation back to Venezuela.

But some human rights groups have challenged that narrative, suggesting it would be difficult to do so since the migrants are literally stripped of all property, including their shoelaces, when they enter their facility.

“It’s an injustice what Mexican immigration has done, and with all the hate in my heart I say, they are evil, evil,” said Abel Manuel Maldonado, whose brother, Orlando Jose Maldonado, was confirmed among the deceased.

“Lots of innocent people died in there, people with kids,” Maldonado said according to a report published by the New York Post.

According to Mexican officials, 68 migrants from Central and South America were being held at the Juárez, Mexico facility, which is located less than one mile from El Paso, Texas.

Some of the migrants were jailed for being a public nuisance over minor incidents such as panhandling while they waited for a U.S. immigration asylum appointment in El Paso.

The deceased and injured are from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, the Mexican Attorney General’s Office said.

Mexican authorities in Ciudad Juárez have become increasingly hostile toward asylum seekers, stopping them from sleeping outside and from begging for money on the streets of the Mexican border town, according to a report published by Mexican newspaper El Diario de Juarez.

The tragic fire comes just weeks after hundreds of Venezuelan migrants charged an international bridges to El Paso from Ciudad Juarez.