The government has been separating children from parents at the border. Now the border is flooding.

Grist has the story on extreme rainfall that has added to the misery at the border. Ten inches of torrential rain fell in Weslaco a “town between McAllen and Brownsville”,  which was enough to cause widespread flooding. At that time, hundreds of asylum seekers were in line seeking entry.

Eric Holthause writes:

The town of Combes, site of one of the shelters, was included in severe thunderstorm warnings and flash flood emergencies issued by the local outpost of the National Weather Service. Local NWS guidelines say that a rainstorm of this magnitude over a 12-hour period has a less than a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year under a stable climate. The bulk of the rainfall Wednesday morning came in just an hour or two, according to radar.

The climate, of course, is not stable. Wednesday’s storm is the latest 100-year downpour in a state full of them in recent years. In Houston alone, there have been three 500-year rainstorms in the past three years. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and increases the ability of routine thunderstorms to become downpours.

Wednesday is also World Refugee Day, so it’s worth mentioning that those who have crossed borders seeking a better life in the U.S. aren’t the only ones dealing with displacement and more extreme weather at the same time. There’s growing evidence that climate change is already leading to increased migration, and once migrants leave their homes, they are more vulnerable to the weather.

This is a global story. In April, for instance, heavy rains and flash flooding destroyed 750 homes and displaced thousands of people at a refugee camp in northern Kenya. And earlier this month, heavy monsoon rains hit the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh, washing away makeshift shelters.

CNN noted that the flash flooding also inundated parts of Houston and in Port Arthur, streets turned into raging rivers. 

We are witnessing the consequences of not acting on climate. It is understood that many nations will become uninhabitable within decades, and those people will want to live. People are moving now, marine life is moving now, any species that is unable to migrate will not survive. 

We must learn from the migration crisis in Europe and now here in the United States, that climate mitigation and adaption is critical in softening the looming blow from a warming planet. Immigration laws must take into account climate refugees. We will be seeing a lot of them.