Garduño will apologize to the families of the 40 killed by the fire in Juárez

Of the writing

La Jornada newspaper
Friday, September 26, 2025, p. 8

A group of human rights defenders and migrants announced that the former head of the National Institute of Migration (INM), Francisco Garduño, will today offer a public apology to the families of the 40 people who died in the fire of the Migration Stay of Ciudad Juárez in March 2023, already cause of which another 27 people were “injured with serious sequels for life”.

The Foundation for Justice, Integral Human Rights in Action (DHIA), the Legal Clinic for Refugees Alaíde Foppa, and the Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI), who legally represent some of the survivors and families of the victims, clarified that although the public apology is coordinated by the Executive Commission of Attention to Victims (CEAV), it is not an act of the Mexican State.

“This is a personal action of Francisco Gy in compliance with the conditions imposed by Judge Víctor Manlio Hernández Calderón as a requirement to grant him the conditional suspension and allow him to free himself from the criminal proceeding he faces for the crime of illicit exercise of the public service, which has brought released from the beginning,” the organizations said in a statement.

It is expected that the act will be at the same time as the march for Ayotzinapa that will be held this day in Mexico City.

In addition, they stressed that the public apology “does not close the case”, nor “should be interpreted as an exemption of responsibilities or as an act of repentance of Francisco Gy; it must be seen as a first symbolic step in the process of integral reparation of the damage to the victims and their families. It does not resolve the demands of justice or guarantees that similar facts are not repeated.”

They indicated that it is necessary that all people linked to criminal proceedings in this case, regardless of the position they held at the time of the events, face a trial until their last consequences; They called the Mexican State to eliminate immigration detention and asked to guarantee the non -repetition of facts such as this through structural changes in immigration policy.