In the face of the deaths in migration detention in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: Statement of March 29

"On the night of Monday, March 27, we received through Mexican media and social networks the news of a state crime. Dozens of migrants of various origins and nationalities, all of them men, died as a result of a fire in one of the 'migration holding centers' of Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM), located in Ciudad Juarez, just a few meters from the Rio Bravo, on the border with the United States. Many other migrants were injured.

The first official reactions - from mainstream media, the State, including the Mexican president himself - revolved around revictimization, seeking to turn migrants into those responsible for their own deaths on the grounds that they had started a riot, an act of protest against confinement and the lack of drinking water.

Those of us who have been in the field and have followed migrants, civil society organizations, activists, and women defenders know that INM premises throughout Mexico are not 'lodgings' or 'migration stations', much less 'shelters' or 'refuges'. They are spaces of deprivation of liberty. What was not so clear before, and is now evident, is that migration deterrence mechanisms involve torture, the pedagogy of cruelty, and state murder. Indeed, those places of confinement are 'torturous', as defenders in that country have revealed for several years.

The INM is a state apparatus coordinated by a former jailer. Since he took office at the beginning of 2019, he has made sure that Mexican territory has become one vast militarized border. That is why we join the collectives and organizations demanding the immediate removal of the INM commissioner, Francisco Garduno Yanez.

From the CLACSO South-South Migrations and Borders Working Group we join the organizations that have insisted on the use of alternatives to migration detention in Mexico, and we demand the definitive closure of detention centers for migrants and refugees in Mexico. We have approached fellow defenders and, together with them, we demand that Mexican authorities provide openness and non-interference in the work of organizations carrying out monitoring and documentation, as well as those providing direct assistance to affected families on both sides of the border."

This text expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Group and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee, or its Executive Secretariat.