Trump admin ignored its own evidence of climate change's impact on migration from Central America

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-ignored-its-own-evidence-climate-change-s-impact-n1056381

By Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley
Sept. 20, 2019

Research compiled one year ago by Customs and Border Protection pointed to an overwhelming factor driving record-setting migration to the U.S. from Guatemala: Crop shortages were leaving rural Guatemalans, especially in the country's western highlands, in extreme poverty and starving.

An internal report that was circulated to senior Homeland Security officials and obtained by NBC News showed that migration surged from those areas of Guatemala without reliable subsistence farming or wages from commercial farming jobs. More than 100,000 Guatemalans headed north last year, and many more followed in fiscal year 2019, making Guatemala the single largest country contributing to undocumented immigration across the U.S. southwest border this year.

Scientists have said the increase in poverty and food insecurity driving migration are due to multiple factors, one of which is climate change.

The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, Kevin McAleenan, has publicly sounded the alarm about Guatemala's food scarcity.

But inside the Trump White House, that message was largely ignored in both policy decisions and messaging around what should be done to stem the flow of migrants. Last October, a month after the CBP report was finalized, President Donald Trump announced he was considering suspending foreign aid to Guatemala, which included money used to mitigate the affects of climate change on small farms.

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Scientists say food insecurity can be traced to several factors. A fungus known as coffee leaf rust is rapidly expanding due to climate change throughout the Dry Corridor, a transnational area stretching through Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. In so doing, it is killing the region's cash crop, coffee. That, along with global competition plus a years-long drought, has made the plant virtually worthless. Other crops are suffering too, making jobs in commercial farming to supplement income hard to come by as well, leaving entire communities without food to sell, or money to buy food to eat.

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While visiting Chiquimula and Zacapa with the World Food Program and Pons in August, NBC News observed villages where children were suffering from malnutrition, including one, Las Sopas, where five children died last year of starvation. Today, the World Food Program, which also does not directly rely on funding from the United States government, is feeding the village's children at the community's school in an emergency response.

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