Salvadorans must leave: Trump
Officials to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants who had fled two quakes
Los Angeles: Nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who had been allowed to live in the US for more than a decade must leave the country, government officials announced on Monday.
It is the Trump administration's latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date.
Homeland security officials said that they were ending a humanitarian programme, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the US since a pair of devastating earthquakes struck their country in 2001.
Salvadorans were by far the largest group of foreigners benefiting from temporary protected status, which shielded them from deportation if they had arrived in the US illegally.
The decision came just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians, the second largest group, lost protections granted after Haiti's 2010 earthquake, and it suggested that others in the programme, namely Hondurans, may soon lose them as well.
Nicaraguans lost their protections last year.In the days leading up to the decision, immigrant advocates and the El Salvadoran government pleaded with the US to extend the programme, as it has several times since 2001, saying that conditions were still dire.
"We had hoped that if we worked hard, paid our taxes and didn't get in trouble we would be allowed to stay," said Veronica Lagunas, 39, a Salvadoran who works overnight cleaning offices in Los Angeles, has two children born in the US and owns a mobile home.
But the Trump administration has been committed to reining in both legal and illegal immigration, most notably by ending protections for 800,000 young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, beginning in March unless Congress grants them legal status before then.
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
