David Agren

A surge in migration through Mexico during the month of September has provoked a “migratory crisis,” according to Catholics who are working with migrants, as shelters strain to handle increasing flows of people heading for the U.S. border — with even more continuing to pour into the country from points south.

Catholics working with migrants welcomed the end of Title 42, saying it had prevented many migrants from applying for asylum and, in many cases, forced people back to dangerous Mexican border towns where they were extorted and kidnapped by police and drug cartels. But they also expressed misgivings about what might replace it.

A fire in a Mexican immigration detention center has claimed the lives of at least 38 migrants, who appeared to be abandoned by guards as flames engulfed their locked cells, according to a leaked video from the facility near the U.S. border in Ciudad Juárez.