At least 38 migrants killed in a fire at a detention center in Mexico

Emergency crews outside an immigration center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where a fire killed at least 38 people. It was the deadliest incident in recent memory at Mexico’s notoriously crowded immigration holding centers and another reminder of the many perils faced by migrants trying to reach the United States. “It’s not like these incidents just happen out of thin air,” said Stephanie Leutert, director of the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at University of Texas at Austin and a former Biden administration official. “You’ve got the U.S. and Mexico’s restrictive immigration policies and border enforcement efforts that create the conditions.” Politics As Biden visits southern border, a humanitarian crisis looms in Mexico As President Biden visits El Paso, thousands of people who fled oppressive countries are marooned in Mexico in the wake of his expansion of a Trump-era policy. The letter described an incident in early March in which they said police violently and arbitrarily detained migrants in a downtown cathedral as well as another incident the following week in which members of the army, the national guard and the city police swarmed a hotel where migrants were staying, sending “a clear message of intimidation.” Tensions boiled over a few weeks ago when hundreds of people — mostly from Venezuela — tried to force their way across an international bridge to El Paso before they were stopped by U.S. authorities.