Tamaulipas, Mexico.
The Governor of Tamaulipas (Northern Mexico), Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, promised on Wednesday that “there will be no impunity” in the case of the 19 murdered and burned people, the majority reportedly migrants, and assured that he is in contact with the government of Guatemala for the identification of victims.
Read: Massacre of Migrants: 19 Burned Bodies Found at US-Mexico Border
“I share the outrage caused by the criminal acts that ended the lives of 19 people in Camargo Municipality. Since I have made a promise to the people of Tamaulipas, there will be no impunity,” the governor said in a video message. broadcast on social networks.
On January 23, authorities found two trucks burned, one with 19 bodies inside, in the town of Santa Anita, Camargo Municipality, bordering Texas, United States, and the Mexican state of Nuevo León.
García Cabeza de Vaca assured Wednesday that the government of Tamaulipas has been working with the state prosecutor’s office from the outset for “total clarification of the facts” and said it is maintaining “permanent communication” with the federal and Guatemalan governments to “cooperate. to work”. in identifying the victims and providing all necessary support to the families. “
“To the families of the victims, I endorse my solidarity and my promise that justice will be done,” he stressed.
Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios announced on Tuesday that 12 state police officers were being arrested for their likely role in the crime, though he did not specify whether the officers committed the murder or hid the killers.
The governor affirmed that despite this detention, Tamaulipas “has thousands of honest police officers who work day after day with the utmost dedication for the integrity of the people of Tamaulipas.”
In addition to state police, the National Migration Institute (INM) is in the spotlight, as one of the crime scene vans was previously guarded by immigration services.
As a result, Mexico’s Home Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero, the ministry responsible for the INM, confirmed this Wednesday that “dozens of immigration officials” have been fired and reported to the prosecution for these events.
Authorities are also maintaining the line of inquiry pointing to organized crime and migrant smuggling behind all this network.
According to testimonials collected by Efe, gunmen from the Northeast Cartel (CDN), the former Zetas, on the day of the afternoon events collided with the Gulf Cartel (CDG), a criminal organization that controls Tamaulipas, in the place of slaughter.
The CDG and the CDN have been in a dispute over control of the northeastern states of Mexico since March 2010, a conflict that has caused more than 15,000 people to disappear and thousands of deaths since that date. EFE