Watch a conversation on the U.S.-Mexico border and the election

This event is being produced in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. Also, sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

One year ago, 40 men were killed in a detention center fire in Ciudad Juárez in one of the deadliest incidents involving immigrants in Mexico’s history. Those killed had come from across Latin America, and their bodies — laid at first in a parking lot outside the facility — were a graphic representation of the violence and economic upheaval raging throughout the region.

But the fire was also a foreseeable result of landmark shifts in U.S. immigration policy, through which the Trump and Biden administrations outsourced immigration enforcement to Mexico, according to a new examination by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. The investigation, accompanied by a short documentary, unpacks the deadly consequences of policies such as Title 42, an emergency health code used by President Donald Trump to slow immigration and then continued under President Joe Biden as criticism mounted over the record numbers of migrants arriving daily.

On Wednesday, The Texas Tribune partnered with ProPublica to host an hourlong virtual event discussing the Juárez fire and U.S. immigration policy.

Reporter Perla Trevizo of The Texas Tribune/ProPublica investigative team outlined some of the warning signs leading up to the Juárez fire. Also, a panel of experts discussed the politics behind the policies that gave rise to the fire, the unprecedented changes those policies have made in the U.S. asylum system and why immigration has become a leading concern among voters as they prepare for this year’s presidential election.

Speakers included: Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute; Maureen Meyer, vice president for programs at the Washington Office on Latin America; and Victor Manjarrez, director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso and a former chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol.

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