S.F. woman: ‘We’ve already formed our lives over here’; concerned that brother will be returned to homeland
Ana Chavez held out hope for months that a humanitarian program that allowed her older brother and nearly 200,000 other immigrants from El Salvador to live and work legally in the United States would be extended once again as it had since 2001.
But her hope quickly vanished Monday when the administration of President Donald Trump announced it would be ending the Temporary Protected Status designation for El Salvador, the latest country to lose the so-called TPS designation under a president who campaigned on the promise to take a hard-line approach to immigration enforcement.
“To allow for an orderly transition, the effective date of the termination of TPS for El Salvador will be delayed 18 months to provide
time for individuals with TPS to arrange for their departure or to seek an alternative lawful immigration status in the United States, if eligible,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release. “The 18 months will also provide time for El Salvador to prepare for the return and reintegration of its citizens.”
The U.S. granted El Salvador the designation after a pair of deadly earthquakes ravaged the country in 2001.
Chavez, 27, an El Salvador native who became a U.S. citizen last year, said the expectation that Salvadorans will be able to pick up their lives in their native country after living in the United States for more than a decade is unrealistic.
“We’ve already formed our lives over here,” she said. “My brother hasn’t been [to El Salvador] since he was like 16 years old, and he’s 35 now. What is he going to go back and do over there? It’s ridiculous for me to even fathom that.”
Chavez’s brother, Oscar, declined to be interviewed. Chavez said her brother sounds “very bummed.”
“He says he doesn’t really want to talk, to give an interview,” she said. “I asked him why. He’s like, ‘I just don’t think this will change anything.’ That was his answer.”
For Trump supporters, Monday’s announcement was welcome news and reason to celebrate.
But for others, it reflected the policies of a president who they say fails to take the human toll into consideration.
“It’s been a year almost since that administration took office, and I’ve stopped expecting mercy, humanitarian behavior and logic to prevail with them,” local immigration attorney Allegra Love said. “They’re policies based on complete hate. You hear that they’re going to cancel TPS and then you’re like, ‘How on earth could they cancel TPS to a country that has one of the highest murder rates in the world?’ But you stopped being surprised.”
It was not immediately known how many Salvadorans live in Santa Fe or Northern New Mexico, but Love said she works with a number of families from El Salvador and that there are restaurants in Santa Fe that employ several Salvadorans.
“We have a relatively tiny Salvadoran population in New Mexico” compared to such cities as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Houston, she said.
Love, founder and director of a Santa Fe-based nonprofit that provides free legal services to immigrant youth and their families, said she can’t figure out why the Temporary Protected Status was extended for so long. But in the intervening years, she said, people built their lives in the United States.
“Yeah, it’s called Temporary Protected Status,” she said. “But the way it’s been enforced and the way that a lot of these populations have been allowed to use it and rely on it requires a much more humanitarian approach to changing our TPS policies rather than just saying, ‘[Expletive], you’re going back to San Salvador.’ ”
Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in a statement that he was “greatly disappointed and saddened” to learn about the Trump administration’s decision to end the program for immigrants from El Salvador.
“This devastating action will cause great harm to the El Salvadorans living in the USA, those U. S. citizens who depend on them and to the already challenged country of El Salvador,” Wester wrote. “It is an attack on the sanctity of the family.”
Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales, an immigrant rights advocate, said in a statement that the administration’s decision “flies in the face of every value that has built this country.”
Chavez, whose older brother lives and works in Santa Fe under the humanitarian program, said she feels sad and disappointed, not just about her brother’s situation but for other immigrants living under a Trump presidency.
“I feel overwhelmed with emotions in the sense that I don’t know what’s going to be my brother’s future by September 2019,” she said. “He just had a little baby girl, and I can’t imagine my niece growing up here without him.” Chavez said she’s angry, too. “Anger because I feel like people always talk without actually knowing,” she said. “I feel like they don’t realize how much, not just Salvadorans, but how much everybody contributes to the economy of this country, to this country. I feel like they just are talking like Trump wants to make America white again.”