Trump: 200,000 Salvadorans must leave U.S.
The Trump administration will end temporary legal immigration status for 200,000 Salvadorans who have been living in the U.S. for nearly two decades, the Department of Homeland Security announced Monday.
Salvadorans who currently have Temporary Protected Status must return to their homeland by September 2019 or become undocumented immi-
grants if they remain without legal protections.
The administration has now terminated TPS status for four countries — El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan. Ten nations were in the program when President Trump took office a year ago.
Salvadorans were first granted TPS in 2001 after a pair of devastating earthquakes that killed nearly 1,000 people and destroyed more than 100,000 homes in the Central American country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen concluded that El Salvador has rebuilt and recovered enough that the emergency declaration is no longer necessary.
“The substantial disruption of living conditions caused by the earthquake no longer exist,” Homeland Security said in a statement.
The decision runs counter to those made by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who extended TPS protections for El Salvador every 18 months. Their administrations said the country had not fully recovered from the quakes and also had raging violence from drug cartels that made it impossible for many people to return.
The State Department issued a travel warning to U.S. travelers last February about widespread violence throughout that country.
Homeland Security said Monday its decision was based on recovery from earthquakes and not on the current state of gang violence in El Salvador.
The moves comes after months of lobbying by El Salvador’s government, a bipartisan group in Congress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all urging Washington to find a way to allow Salvadorans to remain in the United States.
El Salvador’s embassy in Washington estimates that 97 percent of Salvadorans on TPS over age 24 are employed and pay taxes.