Climate Crisis Demands a More Humane Alternative to Mass Deportation  

Kelsey Coolidge (she/her) is the Director of the War Prevention Initiative of the Jubitz Family Foundation. Her work focuses on the intersection of peace and security, climate change, and the environment.   

Mass deportations, the terrorizing of immigrant communities, and the illegal detention of immigrants—whether documented or not—are a defining feature of the second Trump Administration. It was a campaign promise delivered at stunning (and illegal) speed, and one now set to be bolstered by $170 billion in the “Big, Beautiful Bill”. These deportations are underpinned by erroneous claims of disproportionate migrant crime rates¹, white supremacist and nationalist narratives, and the scapegoating immigrants as the driver of social ills.  

The national security infrastructure in the U.S. appears uncomfortably primed to engage in mass violence against civilians on its own soil (putting aside, for this paper, the gross violations of civilian rights as part of military operations beyond our borders). Astronomical sums of money are proposed to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to thoroughly militarize U.S. immigration policy, while humanitarian and aid programs are totally gutted. The “Big, Beautiful Bill” is ugly for immigrants—Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) is now the largest federal law enforcement agency (with a budget larger than most of the world’s militaries²) with $45 billion for new “detention centers” to “double immigrant detention capacity” with extremely limited Congressional oversight, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.³ How has the country of “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” come to embrace such an anti-immigrant stance?  

There is an unexplored driver of a militarized approach to immigration. Mass deportations and border militarization is a national security priority not only because of President Trump’s racist claims—but also because our country’s national security leaders have deemed it a consequence of a warming world. Climate change, and specifically the Pentagon’s strategic planning for climate change, has justified mass deportations as a national security issue. By securitizing climate change, we have (perhaps unintentionally) securitized migrants, naming people as a security threat of climate change, and thereby undermining their human rights and dignity. 

Academics write about securitization theory as a framework to explain how policy issues become urgent, necessitating extraordinary action beyond what is considered normal. ⁴ A policy becomes securitized in part by how political elites frame and understand the issue. Immigration has been securitized by military and political elites’ narrative framing of mass immigration as key national security threat of climate change. Rather than pursue strategies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions or increasing collaboration among regional partners, the U.S. has set itself on a crash course of violent, costly, and inefficient responses to both immigration and climate change. An alternative approach is available, grounded in our common humanity with immigrants and a belief that global warming can proactively address through meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  

SECURITIZING CLIMATE CHANGE 

Climate change has been effectively framed as a security threat by epistemic and national security communities. There were good intentions behind this effort—elevating the risks of climate change as “hard” security was thought to facilitate more urgent action. However, this approach fails to account for the role of militarism in U.S. national security and foreign policy, and the massive environmental toll of military operations. Militarism elevates military solutions as the means to attain safety and security; and with it, an adherence to the use of force, domination, and lethal violence. Climate change cannot be bombed away. 

The very system that produces bombs, ships them, and drops them around the globe is wildly exacerbating the climate crisis through its massive consumption of fossil fuels and GHG emissions. According to the Conflict and Environment Observatory, military GHG emissions are estimated to be around 5.5% of the world’s total emissions making it the fourth largest “country” in terms of total carbon emissions.⁵ As the largest military spender in the world, the U.S. military emits an extraordinary amount of GHG. According to new estimates by Neta Crawford, “from 1979 to 2023, the Pentagon generated almost 4,000 [metric tons of] CO2e – about the same as the entire 2023 emissions reported by India, a country of 1.4 billion people.”⁶ The U.S. military is also reported as the world’s largest institutional consumer of oil (and correspondingly the highest institutional emitter of GHG).⁷   

The unintended consequence of this security framing has diverted away from actions that meaningfully mitigate GHG emissions, increase resilience against climate-related natural disasters, or invest in the necessary green economic transition. Ironically, a security framing of climate change has reaffirmed the centrality of fossil fuels to our national security policy by situating the military as an actor to protect the country against the effects of climate change instead of addressing how military activities themselves contribute to the crisis.  

THE PENTAGON’S APPROACH TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND MIGRATION 

For decades, the Pentagon has advanced the idea of climate change as a national security threat and detailed plans for an anticipated military response. Corey Payne and Ori Swed conducted a review of Pentagon strategy documents finding that overall, “the military does not see saving the planet from a climate catastrophe as a goal that falls within its mandate,”⁸ and, “views its job [as] to ensure that the United States will be among the “winners” of the unfolding climate catastrophe.”⁹  While the majority of these strategy documents detail the ways in which the effects of climate change effect operational readiness and scenario-planning, it is impossible to ignore the frequency of dehumanizing, anti-immigrant language that directly names migrants as a security threat.  

Climate migrants are to be, “approached as a security issue and [met] with a militarized response.”¹⁰  In his book All Hell Breaking Loose, Michael T. Klare provides a deeply uncritical but comprehensive review of the Pentagon’s approach to climate change, detailing to extent to which migration has been named and blamed as the security threat stemming from climate change.¹¹ It is almost comical how badly migrants are portrayed in this book, writing about the likelihood of, “massive waves of human migration and help spread infectious disease, producing disarray across the planet,”¹² or how, “more privileged states [will be] besieged by waves of desperate “climate refugees.”¹³    

Throughout the book, Klare references the security threat of migration as a persistent concern emanating from the Pentagon’s plan to address climate change. “Whenever U.S security analysts have considered the risks of climate change, a perpetual concern has been that extreme events and prolonged droughts could trigger a massive flight of desperate people seeking refuge in other locales, provoking chaos and hostility wherever they travel…and it has remained a major theme to the present day.”¹⁴  Some references include:  

• A 2007 CNA Corporation report warned that climate change, “can fuel migrations in less develop countries, and these migrations can lead to international political conflict.”¹⁵ Klare writes that the CNA report suggests “the primary security threats to the U.S. arise from the potential demand for humanitarian aid and a likely increase in immigration from neighbor states.”¹⁶  
• • A 2015 National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and Changing Climate report¹⁷ which pulled insights from the military’s six geographic combatant commend centers (Northern, Southern, European, Africa, Central, and IndoPacific) and found “the threat of mass migrations arising from extreme drought, coastal flooding, food scarcity, and state collapse was a recurring theme in several of these reports.”¹⁸  
• • In a 2014 report to the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John F. Kelly, “emphasized the importance of taking steps to prevent future climate refugees from entering the United States,” detailing how SouthCom’s exercises modeling the military’s response to a mass migration event used, “Guantanamo Bay to oversee a mock crisis-response mission.”¹⁹  

The underlying logic of the Pentagon’s approach to climate change is based off an assumption that climate change will create clear and predictable “winners” and “losers” on a global scale.²⁰ An early commissioned report from 2003 suggests that “the United State could likely survive shortened growing cycles and harsh weather conditions without catastrophic losses. Borders will be strengthened around the country to hold back unwanted starving immigrants from the Caribbean islands (an especially severe problem), Mexico, and South America.”²¹ While it is not egregious to suggest that wealthier countries are best suited to withstand the shocks of climate change, it is also naïve to underplay the fundamental ways in which the U.S economy is reliant on imported food and migrant labor.²² Further, the defining feature of climate change is unpredictability. “Unchecked global climate change will disrupt a dynamic ecological equilibrium in ways that are difficult to predict. The new ecosystem is likely to be unstable and in continual flux for decades of longer. Today’s “winner” could be tomorrow’s big-time loser.”²³ To create a response based on an assumed, predictable outcome on continued dominance is short-sighted, at best, and at worst wholly underestimates the possible severity of catastrophic outcomes.  

POLICY PROPOSALS 

We have, during the second Trump administration, watched Pentagon hypotheticals and training exercises move into actual practice. There was no guarantee that the Pentagon’s preparations for a “mass migration event”, meant enacting such a response at Guantanamo Bay, yet now the base is holding site for mass deportations.²⁴ As the War on Terror transformed the imperial spoils from naval base to infamous extralegal prison, the militarized response to immigration is expanding it yet again into the front line of an undeclared war on refugees. Even if the military’s assistance in Trump’s mass deportation scheme is not directly linked to its views on climate change, it is certainly the vision of the future that the Pentagon is preparing for as climate change accelerates. If anything, the Pentagon is actively refining its approach in front of our eyes.     

Personally, I cannot subscribe to that vision as the only path forward. Ever the optimist, I believe that we can still mitigate the effects of climate change, bring an end to the era of fossil fuels, and orient our national security, foreign, and immigration policies on shared values of human rights and dignity.  A 2007 joint report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security summed on the national security implications of climate change summarized it nicely: “In order to emerge form a period of severe climate change as a civilization with hopes for a better future and with prospects for further human development, the very model of what constitutes happiness must change. Globalization will have to be redirected…This can occur either as the result of the collapse of the present system, or by its purposeful reconfiguration.”²⁵  

Let us detail what a “purposeful reconfiguration” may look like.  

A 2021 White House report on climate migration offers a few useful starting points.²⁶ It outlines a dual strategy of supporting the human security of migrants to the U.S. while supporting would-be migrants to “who desire to stay as long and safely as possible in their home areas” through investments in U.S. foreign assistance, humanitarian aid, and legal support services. It states, “the foreign assistance infrastructure brings together a powerful combination of tools [and] partnerships to address many elements of the complex issues of climate change and migration. However, current funding levels, structure, and coordination of U.S. foreign assistance is inadequate to meet the challenge…”²⁷ It is safe to say that current funding levels in 2025 are even more inadequate to address the challenge of climate migrants. The hollowing out of USAID and the State Department is a heavy-handed gut-punch to the possibility of a more humane and dignified migration policy. An easy policy recommendation is to reinstate USAID and State funding at least to the previous level and absolutely oppose a reconciliation package that would revoke $8.3 billion in foreign aid from fiscal years 2024 and 2025.  

That budget, likely inadequate, is several orders of magnitude smaller than the Pentagon’s outrageous budget of $1 trillion.²⁸ When considering the climate impact of military emissions, we simply cannot expect to mitigate climate change while increasing the military’s budget. Instead of building up the war machine to fight people fleeing drought, starvation, and unlivable heat, the United States could scale down its military, in turn reducing production of greenhouse gases. There are available policy proposals that reduce Pentagon spending and lower the climate impact of the military, actually making the world a much safer place for people and the natural environment.  

It is possible to create compassionate immigration policies²⁹ paired with robust humanitarian and peacebuilding programs that aim to prevent the disasters that drive people to flee their homes in the first place. These kinds of proposals are inherently less climate-intensive and more dignified than a militarized response to immigration. A starting point is a complete abolition on dehumanizing language about migrants. They are not unwanted “hordes” spreading “disease” and “conflict” wherever they go—they are humans. Centering their humanity should compel us to consider our own complicity in exaggerating the climate crisis and funneling exorbitant amounts of money into a military industrial complex that harms people and the planet. There are a range of policy responses that limit the military’s GHG emissions and reduce harm, namely through military spending cuts and reducing the military’s global footprint. Closing unnecessary global military bases reduces the fossil fuels needed to support such infrastructure while offering the bonus of making it more difficult to carry-out clandestine, climate-intensive, and offensive military activities.³⁰   

We are not alone. All these efforts are amplified and improved through global cooperation and diplomacy, especially with neighboring states and international governance organizations. The investment in the military has eroded diplomatic channels that cultivated a peaceful world—we must claw back and reaffirm global relationships to see a sustainable, peaceful future.     



End Notes

1. 1. Brianna Seid, Rosemary Nidiry, and Ram Subramanian, “Debunking the Myth of the ‘Migrant Crime Wave,’” Brennan Center for Justice, September 26, 2024, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debunking-myth-migrant-crime-wave.

1. 1. “ICE Budget Now Bigger than Most of the World’s Militaries,” Newsweek, July 2, 2025, https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-ice-bill-trump-2093456.

1. 1. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, “Budget Bill Massively Increases Funding for Immigration Detention,” Brennan Center for Justice, March 12, 2025, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/budget-bill-massively-increases-funding-immigration-detention. 

1. 1. Mikkel Flohr, “Key Concept: Securitization (Copenhagen School),” Critical Legal Thinking (blog), March 31, 2025, https://criticallegalthinking.com/2025/03/31/key-concept-securitization-copenhagen-school/. 

1. 1. “New Estimate: Global Military Is Responsible for More Emissions than Russia,” CEOBS (blog), November 10, 2022, https://ceobs.org/new-estimate-global-military-is-responsible-for-more-emissions-than-russia/.

1. 1. Nina Lakhani, “How the US Became the Biggest Military Emitter and Stopped Everyone Finding Out,” The Guardian, May 30, 2025, sec. Environment, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/30/donald-trump-geopolitics-could-deepen-planetary-catastrophe-expert-warns. 

1. 1. Crawford, Neta C., “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War” (Costs of War, November 13, 2019), https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use%2C%20Climate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Revised%20November%202019%20Crawford.pdf. 

1. 1. Corey R. Payne and Ori Swed, “Disentangling the US Military’s Climate Change Paradox: An Institutional Approach,” Sociology Compass 18, no. 1 (2024): 3, https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13127. 

1. 1. Payne and Swed, 7.

1. 1. Paul J. Smith, “Climate Change, Mass Migration and the Military Response,” Orbis 51, no. 4 (January 1, 2007): 617–33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2007.08.006.

1. 1. Michael T. Klare, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019).

1. 1. Klare, 33. Emphasis added.  

1. 1. Klare, 34. Emphasis added. 

1. 1. Klare, 112. Emphasis added.  

1. 1. “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change” (CNA Corporation, 2007), 18, https://www.cna.org/archive/CNA_Files/pdf/national%20security%20and%20the%20threat%20of%20climate%20change.pdf.

1. 1. Klare, All Hell Breaking Loose, 115.

1. 1. “Findings from Select Federal Reports: The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate” (The White House, May 2015), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National_Security_Implications_of_Changing_Climate_Final_051915.pdf.

1. 1. Klare, All Hell Breaking Loose, 27.

1. 1. Klare, 115–16. Emphasis added. 

1. 1. Payne and Swed, “Disentangling the US Military’s Climate Change Paradox.”

1. 1. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” n.d. Emphasis added.  

1. 1. “Mass Deportation,” American Immigration Council (blog), accessed June 24, 2025, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/mass-deportation/.

1. 1. Kurt M Campbell et al., “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change,” n.d., 8. 

1. 1. “Trump Preparing to Send Thousands of Immigrants Including Europeans to Guantanamo Military Prison: Reports | The Independent,” accessed June 26, 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-immigrants-guantanamo-bay-prison-b2767628.html.

1. 1. Campbell et al., “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change,” 78. 

1. 1. “Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration” (The White House, October 2021), https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Report-on-the-Impact-of-Climate-Change-on-Migration.pdf.

1. 1. “Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration” (The White House, October 2021), https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Report-on-the-Impact-of-Climate-Change-on-Migration.pdf.

1. 1. Valerie Insinna, “Trump Administration to Request $1T Defense Budget Using Reconciliation Funds,” Breaking Defense (blog), May 2, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/trump-administration-to-request-1t-defense-budget-using-reconciliation-funds/.

1. 1. “Compassionate Migration Policies Are Also the Right Call Politically,” CIP (blog), April 12, 2022, https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/compassionate-migration-policies-are-also-the-right-call-politically/.

1. 1. “Drawdown: Improving U.S. and Global Security Through Military Base Closures Abroad,” Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (blog), September 20, 2021, https://quincyinst.org/research/drawdown-improving-u-s-and-global-security-through-military-base-closures-abroad/.