Good morning. Welcome to Axios Today. It's Tuesday, February 7th. I'm Nyla Boudou.

Here's what we're covering today. Immigrant communities in Florida react to the new parole program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

But first, an earthquake that killed thousands is another devastating blow to Syrians. That's today's one big thing.

Early Monday morning, local time, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck southern Turkey in northern Syria, with shocks felt as far away as Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel.

It originated near Ghazian Tepp Turkey, a city of more than 2 million people. Later on Monday, a second earthquake of 7.5 magnitude struck the same area, and the death toll is now well into the thousands.

Axios' Lauren Whitney Gottbreath is here to explain how the earthquake compounds existing crises, including the displacement of millions of refugees in Syria from 12 years of civil war.

Lauren Whitney, you wrote that this earthquake is a crisis within multiple crises. Can you break that down for us and catch us up on all the pre-existing crises prior to the earthquake?

Yeah, absolutely. As many people know around the world, Syria has been thrust into a civil war for well over a decade now.

And particularly in northern Syria, a lot of Syrians have been displaced. There's opposition held territory that hosts millions of internally displaced people.

And that's where this earthquake particularly hit. It also hit in areas controlled by the Syrian government.

You also have refugees who pour into Ghazian Tepp and other places in Turkey that were devastated. So these people have been displaced over and over and over again.

So when this earthquake happened, my first thought was yet again, the Syrians are unfortunately experiencing destruction and devastation to unimaginable levels.

Syria is also experiencing a really bad economic crisis at the moment because of the economic crisis and the war.

You have a lot of health facilities that are overcrowded and unable to really respond to the destruction of this horrible earthquake.

It's really unimaginable to think about how Syrians in Syria but also Turkey are going to sort of rise up from this.

What do we know about what life is like on the ground in southern Turkey in northern Syria right now as we're experiencing this immediate aftermath of the earthquake?

People are still in sort of rescue mode. So many buildings were flattened in this earthquake.

I think there's a lot of hope that people will be found alive, but then also there were tons of aftershocks that happen.

And another really strong earthquake that happens. So I think there's still a lot of fear in both Turkey and in Syria as to what destruction may come during sort of these rescue operations.

As we're talking about the international response, we saw both Ukraine and Russia pledging to help Syria as well as Israel and Palestine. Is that pretty typical in a natural disaster like this?

Yeah, I think so. I was interested when I saw Ukraine because obviously that Ukraine is going through a war themselves.

And in terms of the war itself, Russia and Syria or the Syrian government are allied.

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