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Climate-driven disasters can intersect with and exacerbate targeted violence, conflict, and other forms of persecution that drive people to leave their homes and cross borders to seek humanitarian protection. The Global Compact on Refugees recognizes that “climate, environmental degradation and natural disasters increasingly interact with the drivers of refugee movements.” And, as a recent White House report acknowledges, “[t]here is an interplay between climate change and various aspects of eligibility for refugee status.”
However, instead of access to protections enshrined in international human rights law, people seeking safety across borders are often met with pushback policies by states seeking to prevent, contain, or reverse their movements. Such policies expose displaced people to further violence. They also drive migrants and asylum seekers into dangerous terrain made even more perilous by rising temperatures and intensifying precipitation patterns. Thus, in addition to mixing with other root causes of migration, climate change is increasingly making the journey itself more treacherous.
This report analyzes the intersection of climate change and climate-related disasters with other root causes of movement across borders for people who have traveled to the United States-Mexico border from Central America and other parts of Mexico to seek U.S. humanitarian protection. It is based on 38 interviews in Tijuana shelters with Guatemalan, Honduran, Mexican, and Salvadoran individuals who intend to seek U.S. asylum, conducted in Spanish in January 2023 by Human Security Initiative (HUMSI) and a team of Stanford Law School students. All of the individuals interviewed were stranded in Mexico awaiting the opportunity to obtain an exemption to the Title 42 policy, which blocks asylum access at U.S. ports of entry. Publicly available data, news media, and academic and civil society reports also informed this report.
The research team found that many asylum seekers have experienced devastating climate-related disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods, which exacerbated their conditions of vulnerability. Some interviewees cited the destruction of their homes, agricultural lands, and businesses due to climate-related causes as contributing to their decisions to flee. As illegal border pushback policies make travel increasingly unsafe, many asylum seekers reported encountering climate-related adverse weather as well as violence and extortion as they traveled to the border.
While new policies to address cross-border displacement are urgently needed on a global scale, this report focuses on steps the U.S. government can take to protect displaced people impacted by the climate crisis who are seeking U.S. protection. U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), and HUMSI recommend that the United States:
- Adopt climate-specific protection and resettlement pathways;
- Explore the use of U.S. Refugee Admissions Program priority designations to facilitate entry of climate-affected refugees;
- Normalize climate considerations in Temporary Protected Status designations and extensions;
- End pushback policies and restore asylum access at the U.S-Mexico border; and
- Streamline climate considerations into asylum intake procedures.