“It’s the immigration authorities’ fault... they are inhumane,” said a Venezuelan migrant who was waiting for her husband’s release when the fire started that, by official reports, killed 39 migrants on Monday, March 24, although there are several reports of more deaths among the 28 migrants who were hospitalized. In a video that the government itself has recognized as accurate, you can clearly see that, when the fire starts, the guards walk past the holding area without opening it and then walk away, leaving the migrants locked up to die or be seriously injured from carbon monoxide poisoning. This occurred during a protest by migrants for not having received any water at all, all day long, in a detention center with cells with bars, and not in a supposed “shelter,” as Mexican President López Obrador (AMLO) has said.
According to Norte Digital, three of the employees of the National Migration Institute (INM) accuse the INM delegate in Chihuahua, retired Rear Admiral Salvador González Guerrero, of ordering the migrants to be locked up. Attorney Jorge Vázquez Campbell confirms the reports that, with the start of the protest and the subsequent burning of mattresses, “he ordered them to close the gate and for (the employees) to get out, to let them (the migrants) die.” He gave that criminal order when INM personnel called him to ask for instructions. However, the supposed “investigation” promised by the government only encompasses, so far, low-ranking personnel and, to top it off!, one migrant who they are trying to criminalize when it is totally clear that this was a just protest. The INM had illegally detained the migrants for being on the street, for asking for money, selling handicrafts, or for cleaning windshields to eat, which are not crimes. In the raid, they [INM] stole their belongings and money, mistreated them, and even locked up migrants with legal permission to be in Mexico. Once detained, they were denied food and water throughout the day, imprisoning the adult men in cells with locks on the doors. The migrants only resorted to burning mattresses after half an hour or more of protest without any response from the authorities.
The city’s Morena [AMLO’s political party] mayor, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, also played his part: 15 days earlier, he declared that it was “time to put a stop to the migrants,” whipping up reactionary sentiments against the migrants, and then asked the INM for the raid.
The capture and imprisonment of migrants in detention centers under subhuman conditions by the Mexican government is cruel and inhumane and, furthermore, constitutes a flagrant violation of Mexican laws on the matter and international law. Being undocumented in Mexico is only an “administrative offense,” not a crime. Migrants, whether or not they have papers, are not criminals. They are only fleeing from the violence, repression and hunger that make it impossible for them to survive in their countries of origin.
Shortly after this crime, migrants and Mexicans held major protests in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico City, and Tapachula, Chiapas, with slogans such as “It wasn’t the fire, it was the state” and “National Institute of Death” [in Spanish, this has the same initials as the INM]. When AMLO went to Ciudad Juárez, relatives of the dead and hospitalized intercepted his vehicle, shouting “Justice, justice!” However, AMLO refused to speak with them.
AMLO’s whole discourse is cruel demagogy and lies about respecting the human rights of migrants and defending national sovereignty when he shamefully capitulated to the demands of then-President Trump, posting tens of thousands of Mexican National Guard troops to brutally attack, harass, abuse, imprison, and even kill migrants, both on the southern and northern borders, to try to stop the waves of migration towards the United States. The Mexican Migra and the National Guard have become, in effect, mere extensions of the murderous U.S. Migra.
The campaign promises of U.S. President Biden are also cruel demagogy and lies. Biden, until now, has maintained and even worsened the anti-immigrant measures imposed by the fascist Trump. They continue to forcefully expel, without even a hearing, people seeking asylum, either to their places of origin from which they fled for their lives, or to Mexico with the cynical justification of being a “safe third country,” while the highly dangerous conditions for migrants in Mexico are more than evident. And recently, they have reached agreements with Canada to grant fewer asylum cases and toughen their treatment of migrants.
Ciudad Juarez, activists protest the U.S. role in the deaths of 39 migrants in a fire at the detention center. Photo: AP
The United States and the other imperialist powers bear the main responsibility for the migration crisis that is convulsing the planet, with constant reports of deaths of migrants from virtually all the oppressed countries on the planet. The big capitalists of those imperialist countries are at the top of the world capitalist-imperialist system. Their armies have invaded the oppressed countries of the Global South countless times in order to subjugate them. Their system, their transnational corporations and international organizations have fostered the overexploitation of labor in the oppressed countries, they have distorted and fucked up the economies of the oppressed countries to such a degree that many people no longer have means to survive. Their “wars on drugs” have been accompanied by the growth of organized crime in collusion with the authorities in almost every part of the globe.
Global warming is also disproportionately a product of the burning of fossil fuels and methane emissions in imperialist countries, yet virtually no government in the world (including Mexico’s) complies with even the completely inadequate Paris Agreements. And the devastation from global warming has hit areas like Central America, Africa and parts of South Asia particularly hard, prompting more waves of migrants from those regions.
We must expose and denounce the criminal treatment of migrants by the governments of the United States and Mexico and unite with migrants in the fight for a better world, by fighting to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist system responsible for this and many other horrors.
It Wasn’t the Fire, It Was the State!
Migrants Are Not Criminals, They Are International Workers!
End Arrests and Attacks on Migrants!
The Problem Is the Capitalist System, the Solution Is Socialist Revolution!
Aurora Roja
Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico
