Former Housing and Urban Development secretary and 2020 presidential candidate Julián Castro would “create a new refugee category called ‘Climate Refugees,’” his newly released climate plan states, “for people who have been displaced because of migration due to climate change.”
According to his “People & Planet First” plan, “the World Bank estimates that there may be as many as 200 million climate-change-driven migrants by 2050,” and our nation is already seeing the effects of this. “Climate change has ... played a growing role in driving migration from Central America,” Adolfo Flores reported earlier this year—and with horrifically deadly results.
There’s 16-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez, one of the children who has tragically died while under federal immigration custody since the start of Donald Trump’s administration, who was forced to leave his Guatemala village after a severe drought left him and his family eating once a day. He just wanted to go to the U.S. to help provide for his family.
“The ‘dry corridor’ of Central America, which includes parts of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, has been hit with an unusual drought for the last five years,” CNN reported last year. “Crops are failing. Starvation is lurking. More than 2 million people in the region are at risk for hunger, according to an August report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.”
“While climate-driven conflicts do lead to persecution that existing refugee programs can cover,” Castro’s plan continued, “we cannot wait for climate change to destabilize a society before providing assistance. This program would need to include proactive agreements with countries, like the island nations of the Pacific and Caribbean, supporting investments in resilience and, when needed, resettling displaced families.”
No climate plan can truly address this global crisis without also addressing the people affected by the crisis, immigrant advocates said. “In his People & Planet First plan, Secretary Castro outlines a possible solution to a crisis that requires worldwide leadership: mass migrations from regions most affected by the climate crisis are an imminent reality,” said Adrian Reyna of immigrant youth organization United We Dream.
“The growing climate crisis, will require bold, proactive measures to ensure people around the world are protected as they are forced to leave their home countries,” he continued. “Castro’s plan seeks to expand and defend refugee programs, a clear contrast from the current administration’s plan to cage refugees, and endlessly grow the deportation force.” Read Castro’s plan in full here.
