Get to the root of the migrant crisis

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If you care about the migrant crisis, you need to understand what’s happening to Indigenous people and the environment in Central America. Displacement is surging as hurricanes including Helene and Milton intensify due to climate change. Climate refugees, many of them Indigenous, continue arriving in the United States daily.

With each passing year, the impact of climate change becomes more severe. Relentless storms exacerbate precarious conditions in vulnerable communities and displace thousands, particularly in regions already facing environmental crises.

Climate change triggers migration and displacement by intensifying storms, worsening droughts, diminishing water supply and generating crop failures. Central America is convulsing with climate refugees fleeing areas where food doesn’t grow anymore. Fleeing families are seeking not only protection from environmental cataclysms, but also from the violence they exacerbate.

Human rights leader Berta Cáceres was gunned down in 2016 for her outspoken opposition to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project on the Gualcarque River in Honduras. It was a sobering reminder of the relentless violence Indigenous people and activists face. Only years later, in 2021 and 2022, were some of Berta’s assassins convicted and sentenced. Since the wheels of justice churn slowly for Indigenous people, too often the only option is fleeing.

Even today, violence remains unabated in Honduras. Juan López, an environmental activist who fought to save rivers just like Berta, was recently shot and killed in Tocoa. Such violence leads to forced displacement.

For generations, Indigenous people and villagers have been systematically displaced in countries such as El Salvador as a result of policies that banned collective land ownership, abolished communally held Indigenous lands known as ejidos, and unleashed transgenerational violence. Pipil language, identity and culture were nearly exterminated in the 1930s slaughter known as La Matanza — The Massacre. In the 1980s, Salvadoran civil war violence in places like El Mozote and Sumpul River impacted another generation. Insecurity and displacement persist across new generations, with many now seeking refuge in Massachusetts.

As more Indigenous people from Central America come into contact with our immigration system, they face severe language barriers in courts unaccustomed to Indigenous languages and ill-equipped to uphold asylum-seekers’ right, under U.S. law, to an interpreter and translated materials. One of the most significant interventions we can make is ensuring that immigration proceedings have adequate linguistic capacity and resources. This alone would go a long way toward making immigration cases more viable in a system with low asylum success rates.

With powerful storms like Hurricane Milton forcing us to confront the“ mathematical limit” of weather conditions and to consider creating new Category 6 classifications, climate change must also compel us to update our immigration laws and policies to ensure adequate humanitarian relief.

Right now, the federal government may provide discretionary “temporary protected status” to those fleeing environmental disasters like devastating hurricanes. However, this short-term status offers minimal protection and no pathway to citizenship. It’s also prone to politics, like when the Trump administration tried eliminating the program, triggering a legal battle in Boston with Lawyers for Civil Rights, the group I serve. As the November presidential election approaches, the fate of these programs is again at stake.

Against all odds and in the face of adversity, Indigenous people have consistently demonstrated remarkable resilience. Activists like Berta Cáceres and Juan López are part of a long line of awe-inspiring leaders, which also includes the Lenca warrior princess Antu Silan Ulap I, who in the 16th century traveled from village to village uniting her people against the Spanish conquest in Honduras and El Salvador.

It’s our responsibility as a nation that seeks to serve as an example to others to help protect those experiencing upheaval and displacement, and to bring visibility to Indigenous and environmental struggles.

As cities across the nation grapple with an influx of migrants, let’s acknowledge the Indigenous and climate dimensions of the migrant crisis and provide meaningful relief to vulnerable people.

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Iván Espinoza-Madrigal is executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group devoted to advancing equality and justice. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

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