The Guatemalan authorities received on Tuesday the bodies of 17 migrants who died during a fire on March 27, in an immigration station in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
“Mexicans and Guatemalans have worked tirelessly to identify people and achieve repatriation”declared the Guatemalan foreign minister, Mario Bucaroafter honoring with a minute of silence the victims who arrived in a plane of the Mexican air force in the capital of the Central American country.
Also read: Migrants from Guatemala and El Salvador are repatriated after fire in Mexico
Búcaro highlighted that Guatemala adhered to the criminal process in Mexico against those allegedly responsible for the fire in Ciudad Juárez to “seek judgment, punishment and reparation”.
Subsequently, the Guatemalan foreign minister withdrew from the event without answering questions from the press.
The 17 repatriates belonged to indigenous communities in the south and northwest of Guatemala who live in conditions of extreme poverty and were all men between the ages of 18 and 53, according to information from the local Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
farewell
The relatives of the victims took the coffins of their loved ones and will see them off this Wednesday and Thursday in their communities.
During the reception, Laura Elena Carrillo, director of the Mexican Agency for International Cooperation (Amexid), participated and assured that her government “works” to prevent “a tragedy of this type from happening again.”
Guatemala is pending the repatriation of the last two of the 19 people who died in the tragedy and the delay is due to the fact that they are still working to fully identify them, according to the same source.
Nine other Guatemalans who survived the tragedy in Ciudad Juárez continue to be hospitalized in Mexico and are recovering positively, explained Foreign Minister Búcaro.
According to the Mexican authorities, the fire inside an immigration station in Ciudad Juárez originated because some migrants set fire to some mats as a protest measure.
Responsible for the fire in Ciudad Juárez
The Mexican Foreign Ministry assured that the officials accused of being responsible for the fire are already in custody.
The Attorney General’s Office in a statement reported that the identified migrants are of the following nationalities: 1 Colombian, 1 Ecuadorian, 12 Salvadorans, 28 Guatemalans, 13 Hondurans and 13 Venezuelans, although deaths and injuries were not specified.
According to international human rights organizations, 2022 was the most tragic year for migrants in Mexico, as some 900 died trying to cross into the United States.
The region is experiencing a record migratory flow, with 2.76 million undocumented immigrants detained at the United States border with Mexico in fiscal year 2022.
