A top Mexican immigration official was charged Saturday with murder over a fire that killed 40 migrants in a detention center in late March.

Salvador Gonzalez Guerrero, director of the National Institute of Migration in the northern state of Chihuahua, was arrested on September 16 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez (north) with the United States, where the tragedy occurred on the night of March 27 to 28.

According to the Federal Judicial Council, González Guerrero has been charged with causing death and injury, and the illegal exercise of public office.

The judge ordered that he continue to be remanded in custody.

Mexican authorities believe the fire started when a migrant set fire to his bed in a cell he shared with 67 other men, to protest his possible deportation.

And footage captured by surveillance cameras showed that when the fire broke out, neither immigration officials nor security men came to rescue the migrants, who were stuck in their cells.

39 of them died of suffocation on the spot, and another died in the hospital.

Four other officials from the National Immigration Institute were arrested after the tragedy, as well as a security guard and an immigrant suspected of setting the bed on fire.

Francisco Gardoño, commissioner and chief official of the National Institute of Migration, was mentioned in the prosecutor's investigation. He is still free, but he is scheduled to appear before the investigating judge on Tuesday.