Human Rights Activists Warn Climate-Induced Heat Waves Are Killing Asylum Seekers at the Border

A massive heat dome is starting to engulf the southern United States this week. It could grow to be one of the worst in the region’s history, breaking records for intensity and longevity and impacting some 50 million people in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California and Nevada. Heat domes are a key part of heat waves and have become hotter and longer due to climate change, making heat the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States. Along the Southwest border, more than 100 migrants have already died from heat this year amid the Biden administration’s continued crackdown on asylum seekers. We hear from Laurie Cantillo, a board member and volunteer with Humane Borders, which works to maintain water stations for migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the Arizona-Mexico border, as well as Eddie Canales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center, who condemns the U.S.’s policy of migrant deterrence as inhumane and ineffective and says that “migrant deaths will continue to happen until we have a policy [to receive] workers … [and] to deal with the lack of human rights in their home [countries].”