The fire-related deaths of at least 39 migrants in a detention facility in Ciudad Juarez, just across the U.S. border with Mexico, will likely be found to have had several contributing factors.

There was the immediate cause of the blaze, the mattresses apparently set alight by desperate men in the center to protest their imminent deportation. And then there is the apparent role of guards, seen on video walking away from the blaze.

But as an expert on immigration policy, I believe there is another part of the tragedy that can’t be overlooked: the decade ng immigration enforcement policies of the U.S. and Mexican governments that have seen the number of people kept in such facilities skyrocket. 

In the aftermath of the fire, Felipe González Morales, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights of migrants, commented on Twitter that the “extensive use of immigration detention leads to tragedies like this one.”

And the United States is a big part of that “extensive use” on both sides of the border.  

Lengthy stays and fear of deportation

Today Mexico maintains a very large detention system. It comprises several dozen short- and long-term detention centers, housing more than 300,000 people in 2021.

By comparison, the U.S. immigration detention system is the world’s largest. It maintains 131 facilities comprised of government-owned Service Processing Centers, privately run Contract Detention Facilities, and a variety of other detention facilities, including prisons.

Mexico has laws in place that are supposed to guarantee that migrants in detention only endure brief stays and are afforded due process, such as access to lawyers and interpreters. The law also states that they should have adequate conditions, including access to education and health care.

But in reality, what migrants often face at these detention centers is poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding, lengthy stays and despair over the near certainty of deportation. The fire in Ciudad Juárez was started after the migrants – men from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador – learned that they were to be sent back to those nations, according to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Orator. Deportation would have ended their hopes of asylum in the U.S.  

In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón joined efforts with President George W. Bush on the Merida Initiative to wage a war on drugs in Mexico, build a “21st Century U.S.-Mexican border” and shift immigration enforcement into Mexican territory.

These efforts, supported by massive U.S. funding, continue today. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s incoming “transit ban” will mean anyone seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border from May 11, 2023 without having first applied for asylum en route, will be rapidly deported, many to Mexico.

The likelihood is the policy will only worsen the migrant processing bottleneck in Mexico, and add pressure on the country’s already volatile detention facility system.