Families of Mexico Migrant Center fire victims to receive eight million each

The families of 40 people who died in a fire at a detention center for undocumented migrants in a Mexican border town in March will receive more than $8 million each, the government said Sunday.

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According to Mexican authorities, the fire in Ciudad Juarez, on the border with the US city of El Paso, started when a migrant set fire to the mattress in his cell, where he was being held with 67 other men, to protest his possible deportation.

Security camera footage showed that neither immigration officials nor security personnel attempted to evacuate the migrants once the fire broke out.

The National Institute of Migration (INM) said Sunday it had requested the finance ministry provide a “special budget item for the reparation of the damage.”

The amount approved was 140 million pesos for each of the victims, equivalent to about $8.2 million, the INM said.

A total of 39 migrants died at the scene, most of them from asphyxiation, and one more in hospital. In addition, 27 suffered injuries.

The dead included 19 Guatemalans, seven Salvadorans, seven Venezuelans, six Hondurans and one Colombian, with the INM saying all of the bodies had now been repatriated.

Ciudad Juarez is one of the border towns where numerous migrants seeking to cross into the United States end up stranded.

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