With Hurricane Harvey continuing to wreak havoc on Texas and the Gulf Coast, the damage is striking and getting worse. Some have already lost loved ones, many will be forced to rebuild, and all have had their sense of home and community shattered.
As we see images of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation on the news, the hardships of those in the storm’s path are unfathomable. Evacuation has been difficult for some, but for others it’s an impossible choice to make.
For some it's a question of resources. The costs of evacuating add up. Gas, food, and lodging can get expensive -- and that’s if you have a car.
For others it is fear.
Many of the Texans living in the hurricane’s path are undocumented immigrants. During the evacuation period before the storm hit, Customs and Border Protection were continuing to operate roadside checkpoints within 100 miles of the US-Mexico border during the evacuation. In one case, ICE agents abandoned 50 women and children at a closed bus station in San Antonio as Hurricane Harvey was making landfall.
Not only are these Texans living in fear of losing their homes and possibly their lives to climate fueled Hurricane Harvey, but they’re also living in fear of being forcibly removed from their homes and losing their livelihoods through the threat of deportation as they try to escape the storm’s path.
Make no mistake, the destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey is environmental injustice: a storm made worse by the climate crisis that is slamming the most vulnerable communities and magnifying many of the existing crises on the ground. The toxic circumstances many of these neighborhoods face every day has become much more dangerous. No matter one’s race, gender, income, or immigration status, everyone deserves clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, a safe working environment and a healthy climate to live in.
The damage and heartbreak caused by this hurricane will continue to be found in the days, weeks, months, and years to come, long after the storm clouds have passed and the floods have subsided. The cleanup and recovery will take years as well -- and it’s more important than ever that our elected officials invest in a recovery that lifts up the communities hit the hardest, rather than tries to cover up old wounds that the storm raised anew.
To make a terrible situation worse, in the midst of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation that has hit the immigrant community especially hard, U.S. House Republicans are looking to cut a billion dollars of disaster relief money in order to fund an ineffectual and disastrous border wall. We should be investing far more in disaster relief funding to help the hardest-hit communities with a just and equitable recovery right now, not cutting funds to throw more at a billion-dollar boondoggle of a border wall that will only create more humanitarian disasters.
Harvey illustrates a dangerous pattern we must address: discriminatory institutions, environmental injustices, and politicians have forced vulnerable communities to make impossible choices. Evacuate and risk deportation or stay and risk your health and your family in the face of unprecedented floods and toxic threats in your backyard? Could you make such a decision? These are choices no one should have to make, yet tens of thousands of our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members are making this impossible decision as you read this.
It’s more important than ever to make clear that Hurricane Harvey is another unfortunate example of how the immigration and environmental movements’ concerns are intertwined. The communities most threatened by Trump’s presidency -- immigrants, communities of color, women -- are the most vulnerable to toxic pollution and climate change. The struggles to protect our communities and our environment cannot be separated.
We've heard folks asking how they can help, and one way is by creating a fundraising page. We're working hand-in-hand with frontline communities to ensure every dollar raised supports a just and equitable relief effort. 100% of money raised supports Hurricane Harvey recovery.