Trump is still botching the Puerto Rico crisis

His response to Hurricane Maria is leading to mass flight out of Puerto Rico

Victims of Hurricane Maria board a flight for Florida.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

Americans are fleeing Puerto Rico in droves. The reason is that a grinding economic crisis became a full-blown humanitarian disaster after the Trump administration utterly botched the response to Hurricane Maria. At the time of writing — over two months since the hurricane struck — nearly 10 percent of the population is still without water, and well over half is still without electricity. A CNN survey of funeral homes found 499 hurricane-related deaths — almost 10 times the official casualty figure.

As a result, some 168,000 Puerto Ricans have fled the island to Florida alone since the hurricane, by far the fastest out-migration in its history, with another 100,000 booked on flights to Orlando through the end of the year. It is nothing less than an internal refugee crisis created by the bungling and inattention of the American government — most of all the Trump administration.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.