The Trump administration’s white-washing of the country continues full-bore as it announced Monday it is set expel nearly 200,000 Salvadorans currently living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
This is an extension of the move in November in which Trump took aim at 59,000 Haitian and 5,300 Nicaraguan immigrants living under the same protections.
Doris Meissner, a former US Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, now Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, commented:
“All signs at this time point to the supposition that Salvadoran TPS is likely to be terminated. The real issue now is likely to be the amount of time allowed for the wind down. If it’s a long period of time–18 months to two years–that may very well be a signal to the Congress that there is time to find a legislative fix.”
Salvadorans were granted TPS in 2001 after two massive earthquakes devastated their country and killed over 1,000 people.
This allowed them to establish lives here, work, and send their children to school, without having to worry about authorities deporting them.
According to the Center for Migration Studies, Salvadorans represent more than 135,000 households, over a quarter of which own homes with a mortgage, and 88 percent of which are in the labor force.
In the time they have been here, most have learned English, 10 percent are self-employed, and another 10 percent have married US citizens.
According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, TPS Salvadorans have until Sept. 9, 2019 to leave the United States or find a way to obtain green cards.
This presents an additional problem–what happens when they return to El Salvador?
About this, Hugo Castro, a 51-year-old Salvadoran deported from the U.S. in 2015, said:
“The main problem for deportees is that they’re made invisible. They’re rejected, there’s no work. They don’t help us.”
Since President Trump took office a year ago, immigration enforcement agents have increased 40 percent.
The United States has accepted the lowest number of refugees since 1980.
Last week, the Trump administration sent lawmakers an $18 billion blueprint for the first phase of the Mexican border wall Trump promised his base during the presidential campaign.
In March, nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants protected under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are set to begin losing their temporary work permits at a rate of 1,000 per day.
Immigration lawyers from coast to coast are reporting individuals who pose no risk with minimal or no criminal records are being targeted for deportation.
Over 90 percent of removal proceedings in the first two months of Trump’s tenure have been against people who have committed no crime other living in the country undocumented. Early figures on deportation arrests show the number of people arrested without criminal records has doubled.
Who is next to be targeted in Trump’s ‘Merica is now anyone’s guess.
Image credit: washingtonpost.com
