Salvadoran immigrants ordered out

Bay Area family among many who could be forced to leave

For months, Vanessa and Enrique Belasco of Brentwood waited anxiously as they wondered whether President Trump would allow them to stay in the United States — or whether he would strip the El Salvador natives of temporary protection from deportation as he had immigrants from other countries.

On Monday, the answer came. Vanessa Belasco, who is 36 and had been granted what is known as “temporary protected status” or TPS, sat down her two oldest children — 12-year-old and 17-year-old daughters who are U.S. citizens by birth — to break the news.

“You know we were waiting for this announcement. It has come,” she told them, recounting her words in an interview later. “They canceled it — they have given us 18 months. But I want to reas-

sure you guys that mom and dad will do everything we can do to be together.”

She said she held them, kissed them and said, “Don’t be afraid. Continue with your life.”

Belasco and her husband, who restores landmarks in San Francisco, are among more than 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants with TPS, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agency said Monday these people must leave the country, ending a program that began after two earthquakes ravaged El Salvador in 2001, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving countless others homeless.

The program has been repeatedly renewed, until now. This year, the Trump administration revisited it and said that the protection from deportation — which came with an authorization to work — was no longer necessary because the country had adequately recovered from the quakes.

The decision means that the Belascos and others have until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the country unless they have another form of protection, homeland security officials said. Those who do not leave could risk deportation. The Belascos came to the U.S. nearly two decades ago, own a home, pay taxes and live a middle-class life.

“We are Americans — just not in papers,” Vanessa Belasco said.

Monday’s decision comes after Haitians and Nicaraguans lost protected status last year.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “determined that the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist,” the agency said in a statement. “Only Congress can legislate a permanent solution addressing the lack of an enduring lawful immigration status of those currently protected by TPS who have lived and worked in the United States for many years.”

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports restrictive immigration policies, said the administration did the right thing.

“Many do not qualify for the legal routes to a green card, so they should return home,” she said. “Many have acquired work experience and savings that they can use to re-establish themselves in El Salvador. They will be an asset to their home country.”

Immigration experts said the decision is consistent with other moves by Trump, who is phasing out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, and who signed an executive order making everyone who is undocumented in the country a priority for deportation.

“Trump is basically taking a hard line on pretty much every group that had benefited from some semblance of positive discretionary action,” said Bill Hing, an immigration law professor at the University of San Francisco. “It’s going to wreak havoc for the community in San Francisco and Oakland.”

Advocates for immigrants as well as many public officials across the Bay Area harshly criticized the decision, including San Francisco acting Mayor London Breed.

“Ending temporary protected status for Salvadorans is insulting to our American values of opportunity and prosperity for all,” she said in a statement. “Targeting temporary protected status programs — like previous efforts against Haitian, Honduran and Nicaraguan residents — will not make our country safer or stronger.”

In California, more than 49,000 Salvadorans are TPS holders, according to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

The population includes nearly 40,000 California workers, and the think tank estimates the state would lose $2.4 billion annually in gross domestic product without them. More than 50,000 U.S. citizen children in California have parents who are TPS holders from El Salvador, according to the think tank.

Overall, more than 100,000 Salvadoran immigrants live in the Bay Area, said the Migration Policy Institute. The group said Salvadoran immigrants send back large amounts of money to family members in need — including nearly $4 billion in 2012, equaling nearly a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product.

By law, those with protected status could not have been convicted of any felony — or two or more misdemeanors — and must have lived in the U.S. since 2001.

“Paradoxically, ending TPS could trigger even larger migrations of desperate people from the region,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor and chair of the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley.

In early January, a group of mayors, including Libby Schaaf of Oakland, sent a letter to the Trump administration asking for an extension of protection for the group, citing the dangers of the MS-13 gang in El Salvador as one of many safety concerns.

Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis Law School, said gang violence has gripped the country.

“President Trump has recognized gang violence in the United States and the dangerousness of MS-13,” said Johnson. “Given that level of violence, one could claim that the U.S. should consider the extension of TPS status to El Salvadorans based on rampant gang violence, not the earthquake of 2001.”

The State Department currently lists a travel warning for El Salvador, citing “high rates of crime and violence.”

Vanessa Belasco said she and her husband came to the U.S. in 2000 on a tourist visa, then stayed because they wanted to pursue opportunity and escape violence in El Salvador. For the couple, who have a 4-year-old boy, the prospect of returning to their homeland is frightening. They said they would likely leave behind their 17-year-old daughter, who plans to go to college in the U.S.

“We are going to fight with everything have,” she said. “We are going to try to find a way to stay and keep our family together. The fight starts now.”