Most of these migrants are single adults, though a number of them are also families and children. People migrate through Mexico for many reasons, including political instability, lack of work opportunities and violence in their own countries.

My interviews with migrants moving through Mexico show that they tend to widely circulate tragic news, such as news of the June 2022 news of migrants found dead locked in a tractor trailer in San Antonio. Videos and photos of this and other tragic instances, like the Ciudad Juárez fire, provide real, vivid images of what can happen if migrants decide to pursue the same pathway.

And for these migrants, the images and news stories aren’t secondhand information that they can question or doubt – images can be interpreted as unchangeable truths.

Migrants don’t receive news from New York Times alerts or nightly news.

Their information-sharing largely occurs in an underground informal information exchange that circulates news and stories among migrants heading toward the U.S. through Mexico.

That information is shared, discussed, interpreted and commented on through social media platforms, chat groups and word of mouth. Within 24 hours of the Ciudad Juárez fire, every single social media outlet and migrant chat that I follow as part of my research, comprised of thousands of transit migrants moving throughout Mexico and Guatemala in real time, had posted and reposted the video and news of the incident.

Some comments and replies in social media and chat groups about the incident prayed for mercy and peace for the dead and their loved ones.

Others asked for a list of names of the dead, or about their places of origin, as people desperately sought to find out whether their family members and friends were among the dead and injured. Still others asked for tips and discussed ways to avoid suffering the same fate, such as asking about alternate routes to the border, or sharing ways to avoid ending up in Mexican migrant detention centers.

Common among migrants’ reactions to the March 2023 fire was a deep sense of grief. Migrants recognized how close they are to those who lost their lives and expressed a sense of “that could have been me.”

And yet, in my field work, I have found that these horrific events do not deter migrants’ desire to reach the U.S. What they do is reset migrants’ expectations going forward.

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