Before her kids had a chance to go online or talk to friends, Vanessa Velasco went to their rooms early Monday and delivered news that could rip apart the family.
The Trump administration had just announced it will end what is known as Temporary Protected Status for Salvadoran immigrants, forcing nearly 200,000 people, including Velasco and her husband, to choose between voluntarily leaving the U.S. or risking deportation if they stay in a country many have called home for more than a decade.
“It’s an incredibly shameful and cruel way to treat folks who have been abiding by the law almost 20 years and who have built their lives here,” said Juan Rivera, a spokesman for the Central American Resource Center in San Francisco. “We think it’s a waste of money.”
The administration said it will give the Salvadorans until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the United States or find a way to obtain legal residency, according to a statement Monday from the Department of Homeland Security. The Salvadorans were granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, after earthquakes hit the country in 2001, and their permits have been renewed on an 18-month basis since then.
Activists say it’s unclear exactly how many Bay Area Salvadorans like the Velascos will be affected by the announcement, but they agree the number is likely to be in the thousands, and the ripple effects stand to be even greater. Many Salvadorans have U.S.-born children, and some will have to decide whether to split up their families and leave their American children behind if they go back to El Salvador.
Velasco, 36, came to the U.S. from El Salvador about 17 years ago and has since built a life here. Her husband restores landmarks and other buildings for a living while Velasco raises their three kids, ages 17, 12 and 4. The couple own a house in Brentwood, and the Bay Area is the only place any of her children have ever called home. They contribute to Medicare and Social Security.
Now they are gearing up for a fight.
“This is not the time to pray,” Velasco said. “I’m not going to let them break apart my family.”
Monday’s announcement was consistent with the White House’s broader stated goal of reducing legal immigration to the United States and intensifying efforts to expel those who arrived illegally. But Homeland Security officials characterized the decision by Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in narrower legal terms: as a recognition that conditions in El Salvador had improved enough since the earthquakes to make the TPS designation no longer warranted.
“Based on careful consideration of available information, including recommendations received as part of an inter-agency consultation process, the Secretary determined that the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist,” Monday’s DHS statement read. “Thus, under the applicable statute, the current TPS designation must be terminated.”
Yet local Salvadorans say that’s not true.
“That’s the last option,” Velasco said. “That country is not ready to receive us.”
Nestor Andre Castillo, a lecturer at San Francisco State University who was born in San Francisco to two El Salvadoran parents, agrees.
“I don’t know what they are looking at to come up with that conclusion,” Castillo said, adding that El Salvador still has one of the highest murder rates in the western hemisphere.
In November, DHS ended protection status for 60,000 Haitians who arrived after a 2010 earthquake, and for 2,500 Nicaraguan migrants protected after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
A six-month extension recently was granted to 57,000 Hondurans, a decision made before Nielsen’s arrival by then-Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke. That move frustrated White House officials who wanted Duke to end the program.
Rivera’s organization and others have been lobbying Congress to come up with a fix to allow immigrants with Temporary Protected Status to remain in the U.S. They say they’ll continue that work, but now they’re also scrambling to advise Salvadoran immigrants on other legal ways to remain in the country, such as by applying for refugee status. Velasco and her husband are considering their options.
“People are really confused and their livelihoods are completely threatened by this,” Rivera said.
Amanda Baran, consultant to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, also warned “this will have a really big impact on the U.S. economy.” Many Salvadorans work in construction, childcare and service, she said, and the administration’s decision could upend those industries.
“We’re not pleased,” Baran said. “We think that it is shameful that we are expelling these people who have been working and living alongside us for 15 years at least and sentencing them to deportation. We think it’s a horrible decision.”
The Washington Post contributed to this story.
