Essay by Eric Worrall
“… there’s little hope of a new system to help those forced from home by climate impacts …”
‘Every day it’s more barriers’: how the US is shutting out climate refugees
Oliver Milman
Wed 10 Jun 2026 23.00 AESTAs the US shuts its doors to most refugees, there’s little hope of a new system to help those forced from home by climate impacts
Trump targets migrants from countries hit most by climate shocks
Millions of people around the world are having their lives upended by floods, storms and heatwaves worsened by the climate crisis. Those forced to flee their home countries, however, are finding that the door to the US is more firmly shut than ever.
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But those who have managed to get to the US through other means after being displaced in this way now find themselves in an even more precarious position following Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, with little hope of a new system to help others forced from their homes by climate impacts.
For some, that pathway to the US has been particularly perilous. When Hurricane Mitch crashed into Honduras, killing 7,000 people, one affected family surveyed the unsalvageable ruins of their home and realized they had a lifeline – to move to the US.
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“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,” said Evelyn. “I got sick because of the mosquitoes and didn’t have any services to rebuild the house because our country is very poor. My uncle and aunt were just like, ‘OK, just bring the kids over here, don’t stay. It’s dangerous.’”
…“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?” said a doctor from Sudan, who moved to the US several years ago and did not want to be named. The doctor faces the prospect of deportation under a new Trump administration edict that has blocked all entry to the US from Sudan and dozens of other countries.
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“It was always hot, no rain,” said another man, from Somalia and now applying for asylum in the US, about the drought in his own country. Somalia, like Sudan, has been racked by civil war.
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Some Democratic lawmakers have in recent years attempted to introduce a climate-related visa that would cover people fleeing extreme weather disasters. However, with the political mood swinging strongly against migrants, advocates’ hopes of reform have dwindled, even as the number of displaced has ballooned.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/10/climate-change-crisis-refugees
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None of this is evidence the world faces a climate crisis.
Hurricanes in Honduras are nothing new. I feel sorry for someone getting sick from mosquitoes, but if greens hadn’t worked so hard to ban DDT, mosquitoes would not be a problem.
According to the Lancet, extensive DDT spraying in the 1950s and 1960s in Sri Lanka reduced Malaria cases to just 17 in 1963. Think about that – from millions of cases down to just 17 cases of Malaria. From spraying one chemical. DDT is ridiculously easy to make, its bucket chemistry – a two step reaction which requires low cost, easy to obtain chemicals, and a few bags of supermarket ice. Even if Honduras didn’t want to use it all the time, they could keep a few tons handy for emergencies, if the world wasn’t so paranoid about DDT.
As for Somalia, that place has been locked in a civil war since the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. But just down the road, a breakaway province of Somalia called Somaliland, which most of the world for some obscure reason refuses to recognise, has created an island of relative stability.
From what I’ve pieced together from watching documentaries, Somaliland formed when a bunch of warlords agreed to stop killing each other and started encouraging commerce and tourism. Obviously there must be more to it than this, but nobody is talking. They have the best balanced national budget in the world, because nobody will lend them money, since they are not an officially recognised nation. I watched an interview once with the finance minister, he said “if another minister sends me a request for money, and we don’t have the money, I just send it back”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to book a holiday ticket to Somaliland. It’s still a pretty dangerous part of the world, Al Shabaab and other cruel militant groups have a presence there. The government requires visitors to hire an armed escort if they want to venture outside of big cities. But compared to what is happening elsewhere in Somalia, Somaliland is a tranquil oasis – and if walking on the wild side is your thing, the Somaliland government is doing everything in their power to attract a rising number of tourists and entrepreneurs.
Why isn’t the climate change which is messing up Somalia also messing up Somaliland? Maybe because Somalia’s problems are not caused by climate change? Maybe the insanity which is messing up Somalia is because of surging addiction to khat, a meth like stimulant which causes paranoia and mental illness, unpredictable mood swings and uncontrolled violence in heavy users. But pinning Somalia’s problems on climate change fits the alarmist narrative better than the likelihood that Somalia’s problems stem from an out of control substance abuse crisis. Interestingly Somaliland also has high rates of khat usage, but somehow manages to keep the social problems mostly under control. Perhaps this is the difference between good governance and an absence of governance.
That doctor from Sudan, I understand why nobody would want to be sent back to Sudan. Sudan has been a horror show for decades. When a group of student protestors in 2019 demanded better governance and an end to violence, the drug crazed lunatics in uniform deployed by what passes for Sudan’s government gang raped the young women. I would not want to be forced to travel to a place where such wicked things happen. But again, this has nothing to do with climate change. Khartoum where this atrocity happened is at a similar latitude and has a similar climate to parts of Somaliland.
I don’t know why greens are so obsessed by allowing mass migration of climate refugees. Perhaps they are just so desperate to believe in the fake climate crisis, they need to see climate refugees, even if there are no climate refugees.
