US immigration crackdown tightens doors for climate refugees

US shuts – Floods, storms and heatwaves are driving people from their homes, but US and international law does not recognize climate-related displacement as a basis for asylum. After Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown—including an edict blocking entry from Sudan and do

In 1998. when Hurricane Mitch crashed into Honduras. Evelyn was a teenager and her family was left staring at something they couldn’t fix. “There were bodies and dead animals floating in the water. the house was messed up. the furniture was all gone – doors. windows gone. It was so, so sad,” she said, recalling what she saw and what came next.

Mosquitoes made her sick. and her family had no services to rebuild the house because “our country is very poor.” Her uncle and aunt made the choice that desperation often forces: leave. quickly. before waiting for rescue becomes impossible. “My uncle and aunt were just like, ‘OK, just bring the kids over here, don’t stay. It’s dangerous.’”.

For years, the promise of the US was tied to a simple idea—safety. But for people like Evelyn, Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has turned that promise into a harder question: how do you apply when the law itself doesn’t treat climate displacement as a reason?

Neither US nor international law recognizes environmental hazards. such as climate-related displacement. as a valid cause to claim asylum or gain entry through other migration pathways. That legal gap matters most for the people who have already been pushed out by floods. storms and heatwaves worsened by the climate crisis. Disasters don’t just uproot lives—they strip away the resources people need to navigate systems designed for different kinds of harm.

Evelyn, who does not want to share her full name, still lives in New York with two daughters. One is studying to be a lawyer, and the other a doctor. She said she feels the tightening from inside the country too. “Every day it’s more barriers,” she said. “It’s sad to know that people will not be able to apply for a status or something to help their situation and also help the people back home.”.

The storms that once devastated Evelyn’s family are becoming more frequent and more dangerous. Hurricane Mitch’s deadly ferocity is the kind of event made even more likely by a hotter atmosphere and an ocean that has rapidly heated up from the burning of fossil fuels.

But even when climate impacts are the engine of displacement, the US response has increasingly treated migration as a problem of control rather than a humanitarian outcome of a changing planet.

A doctor from Sudan described that shift in blunt personal terms. He moved to the US several years ago and does not want to be named. “I was invited to come here and be part of this country and now all of a sudden you try to make me go back after establishing a life here?” he said.

His fear is not hypothetical. He faces deportation under a new Trump administration edict that has blocked all entry to the US from Sudan and dozens of other countries.

The pressure on him begins far from the US. A severe drought in Sudan has worsened a fierce civil war and pushed people from the agricultural land where he comes from. “People have had to abandon their lands because there isn’t enough water, millions have fled,” he said. “There is climate change and the difficulty of people sharing resources and the conflicts are affected by that. I would rather stay home and do my medical training here but many factors forced me to leave the country.”.

Researchers have found that droughts are being exacerbated by rising global temperatures. The United Nations has estimated 250 million people worldwide have been displaced by environmental factors in the past decade.

Displacement doesn’t always end at borders, either. In some places. people uprooted by climate shocks are also pulled into wars. or targeted by gangs or other violence as a result of moving. Those secondary impacts are often what compel people to flee over international borders and seek sanctuary elsewhere.

In the US, another applicant—this time from Somalia—described a country where heat and water scarcity have been steady, not sudden. “It was always hot, no rain,” he said, describing the drought in his own country. Somalia, like Sudan, has been racked by civil war.

“People from the farming lands, they’re dying, with no water,” he said. “Also the animals, they die because when it’s not raining, everything will dry, people die, animals die, and all the people they run from the farm and come to the city. So everything can get hard.”

After being forced from bone-dry farmland to Mogadishu. he said he came to fear for his life due to armed groups bombing markets and forcing children to become soldiers. He became a refugee and now faces new fears in the US after the Trump administration effectively shut down the asylum system—other than for white South Africans.

“Now we are getting a lot of attacks from the government,” the man said. “I don’t know why. I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s scary with the government here, how they are treating people.”

For Felipe Navarro. associate director of policy and advocacy at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. the situation for people displaced by climate change is shaped by how the system defines eligibility. “If you were displaced by climate change, that door is closed,” he said. He added that climate displacement does not appear to be part of how the administration thinks about migration. “I don’t think climate displacement comes into the administration’s thinking; it’s probably not intentional. They just have a general hatred for certain nationalities and races. This administration doesn’t really care about climate change at all.”.

Some Democratic lawmakers have tried to respond with legislation: they introduced attempts in recent years to create a climate-related visa that would cover people fleeing extreme weather disasters. But with politics turning sharply against migrants. advocates say hopes for reform have dwindled even as the number of displaced has continued to balloon.

Navarro said the long-term effects are difficult to predict, but the immediate pattern is clear. “It’s hard to predict the long-term effects of these policies,” he said. “When we close doors, though, people always find another path to move.”

The accounts from New York and from visa applicants and would-be asylum seekers share a common thread: climate-driven displacement may be escalating. but the legal pathways meant to recognize that reality are not keeping up. For families who watched homes crumble. for doctors who feel deportation closing in. and for people who survived drought. war and forced recruitment. the barriers aren’t just paperwork—they’re time. distance. and the thin margin between safety and being pushed back into danger.

climate refugees US immigration crackdown asylum system Hurricane Mitch Honduras Sudan drought civil war Somalia drought deportation edict climate-related visa Center for Gender and Refugee Studies United Nations displacement