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(CNN) At least 39 people died in a fire at an immigration center in Ciudad Juárez, a city on the border with Mexico and the United States, officials said Tuesday.
Officials say the fire started at the offices of the National Institute for Migration (INM) after they picked up a group of migrants from the city streets and detained them.
The cause of the fire and the nationalities of the victims have not been released by the Mexican National Institute for Migration, which has launched an investigation into the fire that injured 29 people.
Viangri, a Venezuelan immigrant, attends outside an ambulance for her injured husband, Eduardo Caraballo. She sees Mexican authorities and firefighters carry injured migrants out of the National Migration Institute building.
Paramedics stand near the bodies of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, who died in the fire.
“It is with great sadness and sadness to learn of the fire that broke out inside the INM in Ciudad Juárez,” Ciudad Juárez’s deputy federal secretary, Andrea Chavez, tweeted on Tuesday.
We await official information and extend our condolences to the immigrant families from this moment on. FGR has launched an investigation,” Chavez said.
Reuters reports that body bags were lined up near the site of the extinguished fire. Most of the immigrants at the center were Venezuelans.S Added.
Vianry Infante, 31, a Venezuelan national, said: “I’ve been here since 1pm, waiting for my children’s father. Around 10pm, smoke started coming out of nowhere.” .
Her husband, 27-year-old Eduard Caraballo, was in jail and survived by spraying himself with water, Infante said she saw many corpses.
The fires are among the worst in recent years in Mexico, which has seen record levels of crossings at the U.S. border.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration stepped up efforts to curb the number of immigrants crossing the border.
In February, it announced new rules that sharply bar immigrants who have transited through another country on their way to the shared frontier from seeking asylum in the United States.
CNN reached out to Mexican immigration officials for a statement regarding the fire.
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