The lives that the Mexican State burned to the ground

By Sandra Romandía

The images are painful: while the migrants furiously beat the padlocks of their cell at the immigration station of the National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juarez, just a few meters from the Texas crossing, the Mexican agents who depend on this government decide to ignore them and withdraw in the face of the imminent danger posed by the spread of the fire.

Minutes earlier, a fire that apparently started in some mattresses, grew in an untimely manner in this detention center for people from other countries who pass through Mexico trying to reach the United States. According to the images available in the security cameras, the fire started where they, more than 60 migrants, had been detained and overcrowded for a few hours, captured by the Mexican institution that detained them as if they were criminals; as if it did not hurt us as nationals to see our fellow countrymen in the United States living the same persecution.