In photos: Families of Guatemalans killed in migrant center fire bury their dead

No one expected them to return so soon.

Last week the remains of 17 Guatemalan men killed in a fire at a migration center near the US border were flown home, where three days of national mourning were declared. They were among 40 people who died in March at the migration center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, near the border with Texas.

This is not the first time that the Guatemalan president had the opportunity to declare such a period of mourning. It has done so at least twice before: in December 2021, when at least 40 Guatemalans died in a car accident in Chiapas, Mexico, and in March of the same year, when more than a dozen migrants were shot and burned in Tamaulipas, Mexico. .

So far this year, Guatemalan authorities have helped repatriate 58 deceased nationals. In 2022, they brought back 427 people, 361 of whom had died in the United States. Many were migrants trying to cross the US border.

Mexico has arrested five people in connection with the March fire. The prosecutor's office is also expected to file criminal charges against the head of the National Institute for Migration.

Below are the remains of migrants arriving at an air base in Guatemala City on Tuesday evening.

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Francisco Gaspar Rojche Chiquival, 24, and Miguel Rojché Zapalu, 40, were two of the men buried in Chicacao, a mostly indigenous community in southwestern Guatemala. They were uncle and nephew and had left for the United States on March 19.