Trump Administration Extends Protections for Many Salvadorans Living in U.S.

The U.S. government is extending work permits for more than 250,000 immigrants from El Salvador who live in the U.S. under temporary humanitarian protections, as part of a new Trump administration agreement with the Central American country.

Under the accord announced Monday, work authorization for Salvadorans with Temporary Protected Status won’t expire until Jan. 4, 2021 — which represents a one-year extension. In exchange, El Salvador has committed to increase its cooperation with Washington to tackle “irregular migration” and border security issues, according to the Department of Homeland Security, though details remained vague.

The largest proportion of Salvadoran TPS holders — nearly 75,000 — live in California, and have been protected from deportation for nearly two decades.

The announcement comes despite a push by the Trump administration over the past two years to end TPS for people from El Salvador and several other countries.

“Today’s agreements will significantly help the U.S. and our partners in El Salvador confront illegal migration and will strengthen the entire region as we approach the implementation of asylum cooperative agreements,” said Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin K. McAleenan, who announced his resignation earlier in October but has not yet stepped down from his post.

The deal represents one of a series of agreements, intended to reduce the flow of asylum-seekers, that the Trump administration has recently struck with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Most migrants detained at the southern border are from those three countries.

The accords include one signed in September, which could force Central American migrants to seek protections in El Salvador — a gang-plagued nation with one of the highest murder rates in the world — instead of in the U.S.

“It’s not a safe country,” said Claudia Lainez, a Salvadoran veterinary assistant in Oakland who has held TPS since 2001.

Lainez, the mother of a 19-year-old U.S. citizen daughter, said she was “relieved” by the news of the one-year extension. But she also decried the measure as insufficient.

“It’s great that we have one more year. We need to use it as much as we can to push Congress to give us a more permanent solution,” said Lainez, a member of the National TPS Alliance. “It’s really hard to be in this limbo of waiting, waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Since January 2018, the Trump administration has taken steps to end the humanitarian protections for about 400,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan. An estimated 273,000 U.S. citizens, most school-age children, have at least one parent with TPS.

Last October, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked the government from ending the protections. The 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals is expected to soon decide whether the program can continue, said Ahilan Arulanantham, lead plaintiff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.

Lainez and other Salvadoran TPS holders have had to undergo security screenings at least every 18 months to renew their permits.

Arulanantham said the lawsuit guarantees TPS holders from the affected countries six months of protections beyond the date of an adverse court decision.

“While one year is better than six months, it’s still a very short amount of time for a person who’s lived here lawfully for 20 years,” said Arulanantham. “Particularly for U.S. citizen children of TPS holders, they could face an impossible choice ... living in the only country they’ve ever known or be[ing] separated from their parents.”

Under the new agreement, the U.S. is also providing Salvadoran TPS holders with another year to repatriate to their home country if courts rule the Trump administration ended TPS lawfully.

“The Administration’s goal is to create an orderly and responsible process to repatriate Salvadorans and help them return home; however, a sudden inflow of 250,000 individuals to El Salvador could spark another mass migration to the U.S. and reinvigorate the crisis at the southern border,” said a Homeland Security statement justifying the agreement.

Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said it was “encouraging” to see the administration recognize the potentially destructive impact of a sudden return of all TPS holders to El Salvador.

The recent agreements with Central American countries are part of a broader Trump administration strategy to stop potential asylum-seekers from reaching the U.S. border, she said. But those agreements don’t seem to address the reasons people say they are fleeing those countries in the first place, she added.

“They won’t get rid of any of the push factors that are causing people to seek protections in the U.S. — from poverty to political oppression,” Gelatt said.

Earlier this month, the administration reversed its decision to stop sending aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador after those countries signed agreements affecting asylum-seekers.

DHS did not return a request for more information on the September asylum agreement with El Salvador.

“I think it’s a positive development for the U.S. and all of our neighbors to increase our cooperation and migration management and information sharing. The big question mark is what the asylum part of this deal will look like,” said Gelatt.

Under Monday’s immigration accord, Washington and El Salvador will expand biometric data collection and information sharing. U.S. immigration officials will advise Salvadoran police and immigration agents, and “share best practices to support criminal investigations, countering human trafficking and drug trafficking,” according to a Homeland Security statement.