The Climate Crisis Is a Housing Crisis. Black Communities Are Paying the Biggest Price

Hours after his inauguration, President Donald Trump rescinded America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement as part of a flurry of executive actions meant to swiftly pivot the nation from the Biden administration’s agenda. Trump made the rollback of America’s climate change mitigation efforts a key campaign promise, arguing that the agreement undermined Americans’ economic interests. But the accord actually has been poised to be fruitful in a number of ways in bolstering the long-term economic stability of Americans, especially when it comes to housing—a major drain on consumers’ wallets—by making it more environmentally durable and energy-efficient.

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According to a September 2024 poll released by Data for Progress, 76% of Americans believe housing affordability is a growing problem. That’s not totally surprising. Over the last two decades, housing demand in the U.S. has grown much faster than housing supply, and housing costs have risen much faster than incomes. Tack on climate change, a pronounced factor in the nation’s deepening housing crunch, and we have the perfect recipe for a national housing crisis. And the crisis isn’t just about the availability and cost of housing.

When considering climate change, it’s also about location and quality. Nowhere clearer is this convergence than in Black communities, where housing costs have become exceptionally hard to juggle in recent years.

In general, Black people spend more money on housing than any other race, and despite that, they’re still generally less likely to have access to stable housing, contributing to them being disproportionately represented in the nation’s unhoused population. Black homebuyers also pay significantly more than white homebuyers for similar homes. And when it comes to climate change, Black people are a staggering 40% more likely than other races to currently live in places with the highest forecasted increases in extreme temperature-related deaths, according to a study done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). All of these imbalances flow from one common source: the U.S. finance industry.

For decades, America’s finance industry has found increasingly complex ways to advance and capitalize on the racial anxieties and biases of the broader American public. That history begins most famously with the practice of redlining. Redlining, a New Deal-era technique that emerged in the 1930s and soared through the late 1980s, refers to how financial institutions deliberately avoided providing mortgage loans to racial minorities—namely Black individuals—under the guise of the customer being high-risk or otherwise non-creditworthy.

When lenders didn’t outright reject Black customers, they would offer them loans in locations considered undesirable—for example, on low-lying land that was prone to flooding, near pollution-producing highways or industrial waste sites, or on land with poor soil that would foster structurally unsound housing and make agriculture and recreation difficult. That has created an intergenerational phenomenon of Black populations living today on significantly less safe, less productive land with lower levels of appreciation in value.

Climate change is beginning to more directly and deeply exploit these vulnerabilities.

Relative to white populations, Black populations are more likely to dwell on so-called “heat islands” (communities with a predominance of heat-absorbing infrastructure like buildings and concrete roads and little tree shade) and to be exposed to extreme heat. They also carry a substantially higher risk of living in an area that will be impacted by floods. And when it comes to key climate-proofing and adaptation solutions—like improving flood management systems, expanding green spaces, and making energy systems more efficient—Black communities are consistently behind due to ongoing commercial disinvestment and government neglect.

Read More: The Critical Role Trees Play During Heat Waves

These challenges are poised to get even more amplified through the rise of bluelining, a more agile iteration of redlining that is guided by the growing hazards of climate change. Bluelining is a recently coined term referring to the process by which property insurers minimize their potential losses by intermittently inflating insurance costs and trimming and removing coverage in communities most directly confronting climate change. Because of the legacy of redlining, these imperiled communities tend to be nonwhite.

The 2025 Los Angeles wildfires help put the bluelining practice into perspective. In California, towering wildfires have long loomed large as the most nightmarish and concerning outgrowth of climate change. Apart from the visceral damage wildfires cause, Californians are keenly aware of how expensive housing and insurance already are in parts of the state—namely Southern California and the Bay Area—due to the growing intensity and frequency of wildfires. Wildfires cost America up to a stunning $893 billion a year, according to analysis done by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee’s Democratic majority, most of this massive expense coming from diminished real estate.

Against this backdrop, in recent years, national insurers, including Allstate, Nationwide, and Travelers, have adjusted, quietly retooling their policies and redrawing their coverage maps to lower their risks in markets like California. The outcome has been customers getting increasingly low-quality or bare-bones coverage, similar to trends observed in the healthcare industry. In other cases, insurers have paused or entirely withdrawn from state or local markets, thereby creating “home insurance deserts.”

In a poll conducted in 2023, 4 out of 10 Californians indicated they were considering moving out of the state, most citing the costs of living as a primary reason. Black Californians have particularly felt the pinch. The Black population in California decreased from 2.2 million in 2000 to 2.1 million present-day. During this time, cost concerns in California and other parts of the country have become inextricably tied to environmental matters.

Read More: As Wildfires Linger, Focus Turns to Rebuilding in Los Angeles

According to a 2018 study that assessed tens of thousands of census tracts across the U.S., majority Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities were found to have up to 50% higher susceptibility to wildfires in contrast to majority white communities.

Beyond the heightened vulnerability, the burden of recovery is often far steeper for Black populations. Payouts are often significantly lower and more delayed in Black compared to white communities. Altadena, for instance, home to some of the West Coast’s most historic and flourishing Black middle-class neighborhoods, was decimated by the area wildfires. And it’s likely not lost on Altadena’s Black residents that, without intervention, insurance hikes and climate gentrification are likely on the immediate horizon. Racial minorities in places like New Orleans, Houston, and Puerto Rico have vividly experienced this domino effect first-hand in the years following large-scale environmental crises in their communities.

In fact, another 2018 study showed that white households often actually gain wealth in the aftermath of disasters, while Black households indeed lose wealth. Why? White homeowners tend to not only get more aid following disasters, but they also tend to get aid above and beyond the appropriate property valuation.

In addition to the expansive damage to homes that can drive deep, costly repairs, extreme weather events like these also cause catastrophic damage to minority communities’ basic infrastructure and functionality, stifling local commerce, transportation, and access to healthcare. This serves as yet another barrier to recovery.

Ultimately, while the physical and psychological toll of natural disasters like the LA wildfires may appear racially universal, community resilience is very much racialized. So whether speaking figuratively or literally, it remains clear that racial minorities will be paying the biggest price for climate change.

source https://time.com/7210649/climate-housing-black-communities-essay/

Extreme Heat Could Kill Millions of People in Europe, Study Warns

Extreme temperatures — mostly heat — are projected to kill as many as 2.3 million people in Europe by the end of the century unless countries get better at reducing carbon pollution and adapting to hotter conditions, a new study says.

Currently, cold temperatures kill more people in Europe than heat by large margins. But a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used climate simulations of different scenarios and looked at death rates in 854 cities. They found as it warms cold deaths lessen slowly, but heat deaths soar rapidly.

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With few reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and little adaptation like air conditioning and cooling centers, Italy, southern Spain and Greece should see massive increases in the rate of heat deaths due to climate change. On the flip side, much of Scandinavia and the United Kingdom will see fewer temperature-related deaths, mostly due to moderating cold temperatures, the study in Monday’s journal Nature Medicine found.

But even in the most optimistic scenarios — with carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil and gas cut sharply and massive increases in adaptation — there’s a net increase in temperature-related deaths as the world warms, said study lead author Pierre Masselot, an environmental epidemiologist and statistician.

The drop in cold deaths up north are in places not as populated as places further south, where the heat really kicks in and hurts, Masselot said.

“The Mediterranean is a so-called climate hotspot,” Masselot said. “It’s a region that is warming much quicker than the rest of the world. And Malta is right in the middle of it.”

The study projects Malta’s temperature-related death rate to increase by 269 people for every 100,000 by the end of the century. By contrast, Ireland’s will go down slightly, 15 per 100,000 people.

In general, western Europe being wealthier fares better than eastern Europe, Masselot said.

Several heat waves have killed thousands of people in the last few years in Europe, but one in 2003 is the biggest with about 70,000 deaths.

Big cities with lots of people near the Mediterranean can see the bodies pile up through the rest of the century. The study says in the worst case they studied Barcelona could see nearly a quarter million extra temperature-related deaths, while Rome and Naples get close to 150,000 deaths.

In a scenario with carbon pollution only slightly worse than current trends and no extra adaptation to heat, Masselot’s team found more than 5.8 million excess heat deaths just from climate change, but nearly 3.5 million fewer cold deaths too. The team has a interactive website where cities and different factors can be adjusted.

Masselot’s team was also able to isolate out climate change, removing a major factor of an aging population which made the study even more useful and impressive, said University of Washington public health and climate scientist Kristie Ebi, who wasn’t part of the study.

“This very much lines up with what we would expect,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, a Canadian emergency room physician and vice chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. She was not part of the study. “When you think about summertime daytime temperatures in places like Rome — they start to get up into the 40s (104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit)…. That’s very heat stress/heat stroke territory for healthy young people and very dangerous for older people, particularly if they don’t have air conditioning.”

Europe having older housing stock and not much air conditioning needs massive amount of adaptation, such as central air, more green space and cooling centers, to lower the projected death rates, Masselot said. North America is less likely to have such a strong trend, he said.

Another factor is the aging of Europe makes its population more vulnerable, Masselot said.

source https://time.com/7210563/extreme-heat-deaths-europe-climate-study/

The Doomsday Clock Just Moved Closer to Midnight

Today, the Doomsday Clock was set to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight ever in its 78-year history. It’s the duty of the United States, China, and Russia to lead the world back from the brink. Humanity’s continuing existence depends on immediate action from the world’s leaders.

Founded by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Manhattan Project scientists who developed the first atomic weapons, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the hands of the Doomsday Clock since 1947. Nuclear weapons, climate change, biological threats, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are existential risks weighing heavily on the minds of the world’s top scientists.

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In setting the Clock at 89 seconds to midnight—one second closer since the last movement in 2023—the Bulletin is signaling that we’re unacceptably close to catastrophe. We are the closest we have ever been to midnight, an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every moment of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.

The world needs more international cooperation, not less, to tackle these issues. In 2025, it is our fervent hope that leaders will recognize the world’s existential predicament and act in humanity’s best interest by taking bold action to reduce the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, and the potential misuse of biological science as well as a variety of emerging technologies. To continue on our current path would be dangerous.

The war in Ukraine risks the use of nuclear weapons at any moment. A simple accident, impulsive decision, or miscalculation could plunge the world into chaos. And it’s not the only conflict zone that worries experts. Approximately 30 countries without nuclear weapons are currently considering developing arsenals of their own, which undermines longstanding nonproliferation efforts and exponentially increases the probability of nuclear war. Meanwhile, the nuclear arms control process is collapsing, and the current high-level contacts among nuclear powers are entirely inadequate given the danger at hand.

The path forward is not simple, but it is clear. The world desperately needs leadership, innovation, and cooperation. Whether we look to the arms control agreements of the Cold War or the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, our history shows us that rivals can negotiate for the common good. But the world needs to work faster. And unfortunately, the withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement are discouraging signs with which to begin the new year.

The situation is profoundly worrisome, especially for a generation of young people that feels like they are inheriting a world of increasing dysfunction and danger. For many, the future looks bleak. A multitude of threats loom, casting a dark shadow of uncertainty and hopelessness over everyday life.

According to a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet, 57% of 16 to 25-year-olds in the US are “very or extremely worried” about climate change. They are right to worry–their leaders are not acting fast enough. According to The World Meteorological Organization, 2024 was the hottest year on record. Other indicators like sea-level rise and global greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change continued to intensify, and extreme weather and climate change-influenced events hit every continent. But the willingness of the world to address climate change is still falling short, with most governments failing to enact meaningful policies necessary to address the climate crisis.

In regard to nuclear risks, another recent study found that young people are the least likely to believe that nuclear deterrence is a “very effective” strategy in comparison to older generations. They also are most likely to believe that nuclear weapons make America “less safe.” But the U.S.—and other countries that possess nuclear weapons like Russia and China—are continuing to grow their arsenals, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars that could otherwise be spent solving the world’s problems into weapons that can destroy the world many times over.

Meanwhile, top scientists worry that the world is unprepared for the next major pandemic. Emerging, re-emerging, and evolving pathogens continue to threaten society. Bird flu, or highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), is spreading to livestock and dairy products, and new human cases have surfaced, creating the potential for a new pandemic.

These historic challenges are amplified by the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that blur the line between facts and fiction. Science itself is losing the public’s trust; even as scientific breakthroughs sweep over the world. For instance, AI can make it easier than ever for individuals to spread false information across the internet and nations are propagating disinformation and other forms of propaganda to subvert their adversaries’ elections. This corruption of the information ecosystem damages the public discourse and ultimately undermines democracy. It also rewards demagogues who attack science, infringe on human rights, and obstruct our path towards addressing these enormous threats together.

But we must not give up hope that the world can come together and celebrate our shared humanity. Everyone wants to pass down a brighter future to their children and the generations to come. Young people are demanding solutions. World leaders must meet the challenge or risk fueling despair and disillusion.

The cost of failing to choose cooperation over competition can only result in our future doom. The United States, China, and Russia don’t have to agree on every issue, but they should agree on one crucial point: advancing toward a man-made apocalypse benefits none of their national interests. They must come together with the shared intention of setting aside short-sighted competition and working together on our long-term survival. And they must come together now, because every second counts.

source https://time.com/7210372/doomsday-clock-moved-closer-midnight/

Hundreds of U.S. Visa Appointments Canceled in Colombia Following Spat Over Deportation Flights

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Visa appointments at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia were canceled Monday following a dispute over deportation flights from the U.S. that nearly turned into a costly trade war between the two countries.

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Dozens of Colombians showed up outside the U.S. Embassy in Bogota and were handed letters by local staff that said their appointments had been canceled “due to the Colombian government’s refusal to accept repatriation flights of Colombian nationals.” Others with visa appointments for Monday received similar email messages.

Obtaining an appointment can take up to two years.

Tensions between Colombia and the United States escalated Sunday after President Gustavo Petro wrote an early morning message on X saying he would not allow two U.S. air force planes carrying Colombian deportees to land in the country. He had previously authorized the flights.

Petro also shared a video that showed another group of deportees reportedly arriving in Brazil with shackles on their legs. He said Colombia would only accept deportation flights when the United States had established protocols that ensured the “dignified treatment” of expelled migrants.

President Donald Trump responded with a post of his own on Truth Social, in which he called for 25% emergency tariffs on Colombian exports to the United States, and also said that the U.S. visas of Colombian government officials would be revoked, while goods coming from the South American country would face enhanced customs inspections.

Meanwhile, the State Department said Sunday it would stop issuing visas to Colombian nationals until deportation flights resumed.

Tensions decreased Sunday night following negotiations between the countries, with the White House saying in a statement that Colombia had allowed the resumption of deportation flights and “agreed to all of President Trump’s terms,” including the arrival of deportees on military flights.

In the past, most Colombians removed from the United States had been arriving on charter flights organized by U.S. government contractors.

The White House said tariffs on Colombian exports would be put on hold, but added that visa restrictions on Colombian officials and enhanced custom inspections would remain “until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned.”

The State Department has not responded to requests for comment on the resumption of visa appointments.

Last year, more than 1.6 million Colombians traveled to the U.S. legally, according to a report by the Ministry of Commerce. The report said the United States was the top destination for Colombians traveling abroad.

source https://time.com/7210298/colombia-deportation-flights-u-s-visa-appointments/

Memorializing the Holocaust Needs to Go Beyond Auschwitz

Eighty years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers opened the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau and uncovered unimaginable horrors. For the 7,000 prisoners remaining—more than 60,000 had been forced to undertake a death march in the weeks before Allied troops arrived—liberation came as a bitter relief, overshadowed by the harrowing murder of 1.1 million within those gates. This number included 1 million Jews, along with tens of thousands of Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, and others deemed “undesirable” by the Third Reich.

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Since then, Auschwitz has become the foremost symbol of the Holocaust’s atrocities. Yet the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation reminds the world that the scars of genocide, though deep, are slowly being obscured by time. That creates risks: the Holocaust didn’t begin with mass murder. The dehumanization of Jews progressed gradually from public exclusion to eventual internment to finally extermination. Millions of regular Germans—and Europeans more broadly—facilitated or silently accepted these actions.

As Holocaust survivor Marian Turski warned five years ago at Auschwitz, this sort of indifference in the face of discrimination risks people not even noticing when “an Auschwitz-like catastrophe suddenly befalls you and your descendants.”

The time for Holocaust survivors like Turski, most of whom are now in their 90s, to share their warning is growing short. And as the memories of the atrocity fade, the world is witnessing a resurgence of antisemitism, along with other xenophobia, and distortions of history. Members of Germany’s AfD actively engage in Holocaust distortion and denial. Their ideological far-right brethren in Austria may soon form a new government for the first time since World War II. In Italy, which also has a right-wing prime minister in Giorgia Meloni, neofascists openly give fascist salutes in public.

In this climate, remembering the Holocaust in its full complexity becomes a moral and political imperative.

Auschwitz was initially a site for Polish political prisoners. But it quickly became a key instrument of Nazi extermination policies. By 1942, it was central to the implementation of the Nazi regime’s Endlösung der Judenfrage (“Final Solution to the Jewish Question”).

Auschwitz consisted of three separate camps: Auschwitz I, built on former military barracks, housed the infamous Block 10, where Nazi scientists conducted barbaric medical experiments. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, spread across 346 acres (140 hectares) in the nearby village of Brzezinka, became the site of mass extermination, its gas chambers claiming the lives of more than a million victims. Auschwitz III (Monowice) was a hub of forced labor for industrial giants like I.G. Farben, which profited from human misery, even producing Zyklon B, the gas used to murder inmates.

Read More: How to Get Holocaust Education Right

The camp also encompassed adjacent former Polish villages, designated as “zones of interest,” which were cleared of their inhabitants and used to support the operations of Auschwitz. These areas included barracks for guards, factories for forced labor, and agricultural sites meant to sustain the camp’s population and the Nazi war effort.

The images from liberated camps shocked people around the world, as did survivor testimonies, and the evidence of mass murder revealed by postwar trials. 

Faced with the scale of this catastrophe, the world struggled to memorialize the Holocaust. Survivors, Jewish organizations, and national governments played critical roles in shaping early remembrance efforts. Some focused on preserving Jewish culture in the face of near-extinction, while others sought to mark sites of atrocity.

One such effort was led by Holocaust survivor, poet, and writer Abraham Sutzkever, who dedicated himself to preserving Yiddish language and culture. As part of the “Paper Brigade,” which he formed alongside fellow poet Szmerke Kaczerginski, Sutzkever rescued literary documents from the Jewish community of Vilna, Poland, where he had been imprisoned in the ghetto. After the war, these archives were donated to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, where they remain accessible today.

Yet Sutzkever’s efforts were not limited to preserving the past. In defiance of the near destruction of Jewish life in Europe, as well as continued anti-Jewish prejudice and violence, he dedicated himself to ensuring its continuity. His literary magazine, Di Goldene Keyt (“The Golden Chain”), became a symbol of resilience, safeguarding Jewish history and identity for future generations.

Sutzkever’s push was only one of the many efforts to cast this horrific memory in stone. 

Memorializing Auschwitz itself was fraught with challenges. In 1947, the first exhibition chronicling the lives of the death camp’s inmates opened on the grounds of Auschwitz I. A decade later, in January 1957, the International Auschwitz Committee, an association of camp’s survivors and their organizations, launched a competition to design a monument at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, meant to serve as a stark warning to future generations. The debate surrounding this monument revealed a deeper tension: how to properly commemorate mass murder. 

Traditional monuments seemed inadequate for capturing the scale and nature of the Holocaust’s horrors. Polish architect Oskar Hansen proposed a radical approach—a geometric pathway winding through the camp, leading visitors to the crematoria, while allowing the surrounding areas to be overtaken by nature. This was meant to symbolize both the cycle of rebirth and the inevitable erosion of memory. However, officials ultimately rejected his vision. Instead, the International Monument to the Victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau was completed in 1967, featuring abstract sculptures and multilingual inscriptions emphasizing the camp’s global significance.

Yet Auschwitz, despite its profound symbolism, was just one of countless sites where the Holocaust unfolded. Some, like the extermination camps at Sobibor, Majdanek, and Treblinka (all in Poland), were widely known and gradually marked. But many killing sites remained neglected—unmarked forests, bogs, and fields where Jews were rounded up, stripped, and executed in what historians now call the “Holocaust by bullets.” These sites, scattered across Eastern Europe, challenged narratives that isolated Nazi crimes to a few infamous locations. Remembering them was critical because they forced people to confront the widespread complicity of ordinary citizens and the logistical scale of the genocide.

Read More: Who Needs Holocaust Remembrance Day?

The effort to document and commemorate these lesser-known sites, however, has been slow and inconsistent. Stalled throughout the communist era, it gained momentum after the collapse of the communist government in Poland in 1989. Since then, in Poland alone, many individuals, institutions, and grassroots organizations have undertaken efforts to confront the complex histories of the Holocaust and the role played by Poles. Scholarly institutions, such as the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research, have spearheaded these efforts. Over the past decade, during which the authoritarian Law and Justice party has ruled in Poland, the Centre has served as a staunch defender of independent research. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in 2014, has complemented the center’s academic achievements with its focus on popularizing historical knowledge.

Smaller organizations and people working outside of major metropolitan centers are engaged in equally important efforts to confront the troubling histories of the Holocaust where they occurred. The work of organizations like the Forgotten Foundation, in collaboration with the Warsaw-based Rabbinical Commission, has been crucial in identifying and preserving unmarked burial sites. Scholars such as Caroline Sturdy Colls have pioneered non-invasive archaeological methods to locate mass graves, including one in Adampol, Poland, where a memorial site has now been erected. The Brama Cukermana Foundation has similarly worked to preserve the legacy of ghetto fighters in Będzin, Poland, successfully lobbying for the creation of a local museum. Similar efforts exist elsewhere throughout Europe.

The challenge of Holocaust memory extends beyond sites of murder to the places where Jews sought refuge. My own research has focused on identifying and marking these spaces of survival. One such project, Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival, examined nine hiding places used by Jews during the war. 

Among them was a shelter in a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. The hideout was built by enlarging and bricking up a grave pit, creating a roughly square space that could fit several people standing. The ceiling was formed from Jewish tombstones (matzevot) laid across tram rails. This refuge provided temporary shelter until it was discovered in 1942. Of those who sought safety there, only two teenage boys, Abraham Carmi (formerly Abraham Stolbach) and Dawid “Jurek” Płoński, survived the war. Today, the site still awaits proper commemoration.

As we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we must recognize that Holocaust memory is neither singular nor static. It is a fragmented history, spread across Europe, shaped by countless stories of survival and loss. The massive extermination camps force us to acknowledge the industrial scale of genocide, while smaller, more obscure memorials remind us how deeply the Holocaust infiltrated everyday life. Forgetting these sites—whether through neglect or intentional erasure—risks distorting our understanding of the past.

Memorializing the Holocaust on a broad scale is crucial to reaching new audiences, ensuring that people worldwide remember the many actions by everyday people that built toward mass extermination — as well as addressing contemporary threats to historical truth. Doing so does not simply honor the past, it safeguards the future.

Natalia Romik is a public historian, architect and artist whose work focuses on Jewish memory and commemoration of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Ukraine.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/7210222/auschwitz-anniversary-holocaust-memorials-future/

What to Know About the U.S.-Colombia Clash Over Deportations and Tariffs

BOGOTA, Colombia — The United States and Colombia, long close partners in anti-narcotics efforts, clashed Sunday over the deportation of migrants and imposed tariffs on each other’s goods in a show of what countries could face if they intervene in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

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Presidents Donald Trump and Gustavo Petro, in a series of social media posts, defended their views on migration, with the latter accusing Trump of not treating immigrants with dignity during deportation and announcing a retaliatory 25% increase in Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods.

Earlier, the U.S. president had ordered visa restrictions, 25% tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods, which would be raised to 50% in one week, and other retaliatory measures sparked by Petro’s decision to reject two Colombia-bound U.S. military aircraft carrying migrants.

Trump said the measures were necessary because Petro’s decision “jeopardized” national security in the U.S.

“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States.”

Later Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he was authorizing the visa restrictions on Colombian government officials and their families “who were responsible for the interference of U.S. repatriation flight operations.” They were being imposed on top of the State Department’s move to suspend the processing of visas at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia’s capital, Bogota.

The restrictions will continue, Rubio said, “until Colombia meets its obligations to accept the return of its own citizens.”

Earlier in the day, Petro said his government would not accept flights carrying migrants deported from the U.S. until the Trump administration creates a protocol that treats them with “dignity.” Petro made the announcement in two X posts, one of which included a news video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil walking on a tarmac with restraints on their hands and feet.

“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro said. “That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants… In civilian planes, without being treated like criminals, we will receive our fellow citizens.”

After Trump’s announcement, Petro said in a post on X that he had ordered the “foreign trade minister to raise import tariffs from the U.S. by 25%.”

Colombia has traditionally been the U.S.’s top ally in Latin America. But their relationship has strained since Petro, a former guerrilla, became Colombia’s first leftist president in 2022 and sought distance from the U.S.

Colombia accepted 475 deportation flights from the U.S. from 2020 to 2024, fifth behind Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data. It accepted 124 deportation flights in 2024.

Colombia is also among the countries that last year began accepting U.S.-funded deportation flights from Panama.

The U.S. government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press regarding aircraft and protocols used in deportations to Colombia.

“This is a clear message we are sending that countries have an obligation to accept repatriation flights,” a senior administration official told AP. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss issue publicly.

Rubio in a statement said Petro “canceled his authorization” for the flights when the aircraft were in the air.

Colombians emerged in recent years as a major presence on the U.S. border with Mexico, aided in part by a visa regime that allows them to easily fly to Mexico and avoid trekking though the treacherous Darien Gap. They ranked fourth with 127,604 arrests for illegal crossings during a 12-month period through September, behind Mexicans, Guatemalans and Venezuelans.

Mexico hasn’t imposed visa restrictions on Colombians, as they have on Venezuelans, Ecuadoreans and Peruvians.

Petro’s government in a statement later announced that the South American country’s presidential aircraft had been made available to facilitate the return of migrants who were to arrive hours earlier on the U.S. military airplanes and guarantee them “dignified conditions.”

As part of a flurry of actions to make good on Trump’s campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration, his government is using active-duty military to help secure the border and carry out deportations.

Two U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo planes carrying migrants removed from the U.S. touched down early Friday in Guatemala. That same day, Honduras received two deportation flights carrying a total of 193 people.

In announcing what he called “urgent and decisive retaliatory measures,” Trump explained that he ordered the tariffs and “A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations” on Colombian government officials, allies and supporters.

“All Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government,” Trump wrote will be subject to “Visa Sanctions.” He did not say to which party he was referring to or provide any additional details on the visa and travel restrictions.

Trump added that all Colombians will face enhanced customs inspections.

Trump’s actions would seem to undercut his goal to reduce his country’s trade deficit. Unlike Mexico or China, Colombia is one of the few countries with a trade deficit with the U.S., of around $1.4 billion, according to U.S. trade data.

Colombia is the U.S.’s second biggest buyer of corn and corn feed, according to the U.S. grains council, helping boost U.S. commodity exports from farm belt states like Iowa, Indiana and Nebraska to more than $733 million last year.

The U.S. export boom has been driven by a two-decade-old free trade agreement between the two countries, which have for long been close partners in the war on drugs. It is unclear if Trump’s tariffs are allowed under the agreement, which contains a dispute mechanism to resolve trade fights.

Colombia is the U.S.’s fourth-largest overseas supplier of crude oil, shipping about 209,000 barrels of oil per day last year, although booming domestic production has reduced the U.S.’ dependence on foreign oil. The South American country is also the U.S.’s largest supplier of fresh cut flowers.

—Regina Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Jill Colvin in New York, Joshua Goodman in Miami, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7210168/us-colombia-trump-petro-deportations-tariffs-explainer/

How Domestic Workers Have Been Impacted by the Los Angeles Fires

In the wake of the Palisades fire, Theresa is one of many domestic workers in Los Angeles trying to make ends meet after abruptly losing her job. Though she didn’t personally live in the fire’s path, she has worked as a house cleaner in the Pacific Palisades for eight years. Theresa says she does not know if her employer’s home is still standing, as they have not responded to her since the fire broke out. Now, Theresa, who requested the use of a pseudonym, is awaiting payment for work completed before the blazes and struggling to figure out how to pay her bills and support her two children.

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The air quality is also causing concern. Theresa’s nose has been bothering her and one of her children has asthma. Each night, she has to give her child a nebulizer treatment and has even had to take them to the emergency room.

“I understand that the focus is on people’s losses right now, but how are they thinking about workers like me?” she says, speaking in her native Spanish. “How are they [the government] thinking about the trauma that workers like me experienced that night when we had to leave the fires and try to get home to our children? How do we make sure something like this doesn’t happen again?”

Theresa is currently receiving guidance from Maegan Ortiz, the executive director of the non-profit Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA), who assisted with translation during our conversation. Theresa is one of the many domestic workers in need of help since several wildfires torched over 50,000 acres and have so far left 28 dead. Tens of thousands of people were placed under evacuation orders, and more than 16,000 structures—including homes and businesses—have been destroyed in the fires.

On Jan. 23, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $2.5 billion bipartisan relief package to help Los Angeles recover and rebuild.

But Ortiz says that it could take years for individual workers to regain their financial footing. After the Woolsey fire destroyed over 1,600 structures in November 2018, it took two years for workers employed in the area to not require additional assistance for basic needs like food, rent, and healthcare, according to tracking by IDEPSCA. Ortiz says that the impact this time around could be far worse.

“That was one fire. Now we’re talking five [or more],” says Ortiz. “The time to recover for this workforce is going to be a lot longer.”

Theresa is among the domestic workers who have applied for grants for aid from IDEPSCA, which is an affiliate of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). Ai-jen Poo—president of the NDWA, which advocates for the over 2 million nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers in the United States—points out that Los Angeles has a large concentration of domestic workers. In moments like this, Poo says community support is of the utmost importance, especially since domestic labor is typically “invisible work,” and often done by more vulnerable communities—the workforce is “overwhelmingly” made up of women and immigrant populations.

A study by UCLA, published on Jan. 15, showed that 85% of individuals employed as household workers in Los Angeles are Latino. And, among these individuals, 47% are self-employed, making them ineligible for unemployment benefits or formal protections such as paid leave.

“You could walk into any neighborhood in L.A. and not know which homes are also workplaces,” Poo says. “There’s a very long history of treating domestic workers differently from other workers, excluding them from basic rights and protections that other workers take for granted in the workplace.” 

For Anna Guerrero—who has spent decades working as a housekeeper for two homes in the Palisades—the reality of being without income and insurance has hit hard. Both of her employers lost their homes, and since she typically gets paid by the day, she’s been without work since the fires began. All of this is exacerbated by her efforts in caring for her elderly mother and tending to her husband, who is due to have surgery later in the year.

Her biggest need right now, she says, is regaining a steady source of income. 

“At the end of the month, I still have to pay the rent and buy the food. Everything is expensive. Life is expensive,” she says. “I’m not receiving any [financial support] right now. I’m just trying to figure it out as I go. There’s a lot of people who lost their jobs, so it’s been really hard to find work.”

The predicament of Theresa and Anna is something Lucia Diaz, CEO of the Mar Vista Family Center in Culver City, is all too familiar with. She used to work as a housecleaner and nanny, and is currently supporting domestic workers at the center. Many of them have lost their jobs as the houses they worked at in the Palisades are no longer standing. Some of the workers who seek her help are undocumented, which she says provides another layer of problems, especially considering President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on immigration.

“There’s a lot of fear in people. It’s not easy to ask for a job, to apply for government assistance [when you are undocumented],” Diaz says. “With the fires and all this political change, it’s like two disasters happening at the same time.”

There are also concerns about the health of workers who remained near the impacted areas, since wildfire smoke contains many pollutants and can lead to short and long term health problems when inhaled.

Recently, California passed an expansion to California’s Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to include domestic employees who work through agencies—which according to the UCLA Labor Center is 84% of homecare attendants. These protections don’t come into effect until later in 2025, though, so Poo says much of their current work is dedicated to advocating for the health and safety needs of domestic workers. 

Ortiz recalls anecdotes from domestic laborers during the aftermath of the Woolsey fire—workers being hired to put out fires, employers evacuating but leaving their household workers behind to care for pets, workers left behind to clean toxic ash. And with domestic laborers currently not covered under Cal-OSHA protections, Poo and Ortiz see their work of educating and advocating for household workers as more important than ever.

“This is a workforce with no safety net and no savings. People work paycheck to paycheck, and so [it’s about] being able to afford food, water, clothing, and then getting access to information about health and safety and in the language they speak,” Poo says.

Amid the blazes, NDWA and IDEPSCA have been providing information to workers about toxicity in the wake of the fires, PPE, temporary shelter, and transportation for evacuees. Ortiz says that IDEPSCA’s office has become a “distribution center” of everything from masks and water to diapers and hot meals. NDWA has set up a Domestic Worker Relief Fund for those workers affected by the fires. Poo says that emergency financial assistance funds such as this is the most immediate way people can help those that need aid.

But many of the displaced laborers IDEPSCA and NDWA work with have been difficult to track down—some have evacuated out of Los Angeles with their clients, some remain in the city. 

They’re only now in the “forensic” stage of understanding how people have been impacted, Poo says, and the battle has just begun. Ortiz is especially thinking of her undocumented community members who have been displaced and may not be eligible for FEMA assistance. “We’re going to have to keep an eye out for keeping people housed,” she says, fearing that some may be scared to ask for help, and in their desperation, may be taken advantage of.

“Something we saw after Woolsey was a lot of people taking advantage of the undocumented workforce and underpaying them, if paying them at all,” Ortiz says. “So that’s something we’re very concerned about, especially given the sort of anti-immigrant rhetoric that the federal government is promoting.”

Still, Ortiz says that even if the outcomes from these fires are more devastating, the response from the community has been more heartwarming than she’s seen in the past. 

Organizations in areas that were not impacted by the fires—like Westchester and Culver City—have been opening up food banks and floating donations to aid impacted workers, says Jesus Orozco, a community organizer who works for the city of LA. Orozco volunteers at the Mar Vista Family Center, which he points out was founded by Palisades residents in the 70s and continues to receive financial support from families in the area.

But now, as many face down the cost of rebuilding, he worries that the organization might see a drop in support that allows them to provide critical services—from food banks to after-school programming. “The YMCA, the Boys & Girls Clubs, all of them depend on philanthropists that live in these areas,” he says. “Their primary focus is gonna be on rebuilding.”

For Orozco, remembering the community is key. “We’re all feeling grief,” he says. “No matter what socio-economic background we’re from, we’re all connected here.”

source https://time.com/7209524/how-domestic-workers-have-been-impacted-by-los-angeles-fires/