The FGR states that Francisco Garduño, head of the INM, allegedly failed to comply with his duties, which led to the tragedy in Ciudad Juarez.
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) informed this Tuesday that it will proceed criminally against the head of the National Migration Institute (INM), Francisco Garduño, among other officials, for the death of 40 migrants in a fire inside a migration station in the north of Mexico.
“Criminal proceedings have been brought against the directors of the INM, Francisco “N” and Antonio (Lopez Diaz, general director of Control and Verification), who incurred in alleged criminal conduct, by failing to comply with their obligations to monitor, protect and provide security to the people and facilities under their charge, encouraging the crimes committed against migrants,” said the Attorney General’s Office in a statement.
On the night of March 27, a fire at the INM center in the border city of Ciudad Juarez killed 40 migrants, among them six Hondurans, seven Salvadorans, 18 Guatemalans, seven Venezuelans and one Colombian, an incident that the Salvadoran government described as a “crime of state” and for which it called for the removal of the heads of Mexico’s migration policy.
The Mexican Prosecutor’s Office explained that its action was taken after determining “a pattern of conduct in which the responsible parties omitted the security measures that were indispensable and obligatory for these cases”.
This, after indicating that the function of the INM is the execution, control and supervision of all migration policies at the national level.
The FGR recalled that last March 31, only four days after the fire at the migratory station on the US-Mexico border, another incident also took place at a migratory center in Tenosique, Tabasco, in the south of the country, which left one person dead and 14 injured.
He also stated that reports from the Superior Audit Office of the Federation in recent years point out, “with complete clarity, the faults and omissions that continue to be committed in the INM; and indicate a pattern of irresponsibility and omissions that has been reiterated and that has been the cause of these unfortunate events already mentioned”.
For this reason, the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office also indicated that it will take criminal proceedings against public servants Salvador “N”, Juan “N”, Cecilia “N” and Eduardo “N”, who, it said, “are directly linked to the conducts that generated the homicides and injuries suffered by the victims of these crimes”.
On the other hand, he indicated that the private company in charge of security at the INM centers were based on public contracts assigned directly, “omitting their public bidding obligations and generating costs double what is paid in the public sector for these same services”.
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