Mexico immigration agency head to stand trial in deadly fire

The chief of Mexico’s immigration agency was ordered to stand trial for failing to protect 40 migrants who perished in a March border detention center fire.

Francisco Garduño will work and remain free during the procedures. Rodolfo Pérez, his lawyer, told The Associated Press that they will try to settle for victim restitution to avoid a trial.

“I will keep working… until ordered otherwise,” Garduño told reporters as he exited the court in Ciudad Juárez late Sunday.

Federal prosecutors said Garduño was responsible for immigration facility safety and that he knew Ciudad Juárez’s detention center lacked basic safety precautions but did nothing to fix it.

The judge refused the prosecutors’ plea to fire Garduño. He must attend court every two weeks.

The Garduño defense team claimed that a private firm secured the facilities, not government employees.

A migrant set fire to the Ciudad Juarez detention prison on March 27. Security cameras showed smoke swiftly filling the jail containing 68 male migrants, but no one with keys tried to rescue them. Fire killed 40 and injured almost two dozen.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador supports Garduño. Under pressure from then-U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on migrants entering Mexico, Garduño was appointed agency director in 2019. Garduño headed Mexico’s prisons.

One immigration official is on trial with Garduño. Six others, including a former military official who was the immigration agency’s envoy in Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juárez resides, were charged with homicide and causing injury by omission.