By: The opinion Posted Jul 13, 2023, 1:44 am EDT
March 27 of this year was marked by the death of 40 migrants, mainly from the south of the continent, who were being held in the immigration center. The event caused outrage and raised doubts about the handling of the treatment of foreigners by the Mexican authorities.
Four months from that moment, Eight survivors of the fire at the immigration station in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, north of the country, and their relatives demanded periodic information from the authorities on actions to guarantee truth, justice, and reparation for the damage.
In addition, they requested attention to their economic and physical and mental health needs in Mexico and in their countries of origin.
In a statement supported by organizations such as the Institute for Women in Migration, Fundación para la Justicia and Asylum Access México, the victims asked the Mexican government to register all the victims and their families in the National Registry of Victims of the Executive Commission of Attention to Victims (CEAV) of the Ministry of the Interior (Interior) of Mexico.
“More than 100 days ago our lives changed forever. We came to Mexico not to stay but to move towards our goal: to find protection and better opportunities for our daughters, sons and families. No one told us that the price would be confinement, the loss of health and life,” they said in the statement.
They pointed out that after the fire, they spent more than a month hospitalized and “Today we continue in medical attention, some with neurological sequelae, with limited mobility, with external and internal burns of our organs, one of us lost an arm. Life will not be the same and it is our families who will assume that cost”, they pointed out.
They pointed out that although they have received support, “some Mexican authorities treat us with contempt” and accused that the CEAV “has not given us clear information. We need our medical records.”
“We are not criminals and we are not taking advantage of this country.… We are people who sought to give better opportunities to our daughters, sons and families”, they pointed out in the statement.
“The least we want is justice. That this does not happen to any migrant and protection applicant in this country,” they demanded.
After the tragedy, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised that there will be justice and since then, a dozen people have been arrested, while the director of the INM, Francisco Garduño, was opened a judicial process because the FGR accuses him of omission of functions for his role in the facts, but he remains free and without resigning his position.
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