200,000 Salvadorans

The Trump Administration Will End Protected Status for 200,000 Salvadorans

They face possible deportation if they don’t leave the country by September 2019.

NOAH LANARD

The Department of Homeland Security plans to end temporary legal status for about 200,000 Salvadorans, the Washington Post reports. Salvadoran immigrants will face possible deportation if they don’t leave the country by September 2019, or find another way to obtain legal status in the United States.

El Salvadorans living in the United States were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2001 after the country was hit by a pair of deadly earthquakes. TPS allows people from an impacted country who are already in the United States at the time of a disaster to temporarily remain in the United States. El Salvador’s TPS designation has been renewed 11 times—under Republican and Democratic administrations—since then.

The Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration will announce Monday that it intends to cancel the provisional residency permits of about 200,000 Salvadorans who have lived in the country since at least 2001, leaving them vulnerable to deportation, according to mulitple people on Capitol Hill who’ve been apprised of the plan.

The administration will notify the Salvadorans they have until Sept. 9, 2019 to leave the United States or find a new way to obtain legal residency, according to a copy of the announcement prepared by the Department of Homeland Security that will be published Monday morning…

The decision is likely to please immigration hard-liners who argue the TPS program was never intended to provide long-term residency.