“A Sword of Damocles”: Salvadoran TPS Holders Are in Limbo as DHS Does Nothing

Por Isabela Dias — Mother Jones Magazine

September 9 loomed large for the approximately 170,000 Salvadorans living in the United States with humanitarian protection for immigrants from crisis-stricken countries. The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for El Salvador was set to expire that day, potentially putting one of the largest groups of TPS holders in the country at risk of losing legal status and making them vulnerable to deportation.

But the deadline came and went, without the Trump administration either formally renewing or axing the protection for that population. Instead, the program’s website now says that an “announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time.” Until then, Salvadorans with TPS will continue to be protected and authorized to work, according to the government.

The reprieve, while welcome, leaves these TPS holders who have lived and worked in the United States for decades in limbo. Or, as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council put it, “with a sword of Damocles over their heads.”  

“The only thing we know is that TPS for El Salvador is still alive and protecting people from detention and deportation,” says José Palma, a coordinator with the National TPS Alliance, an organization led by beneficiaries of the program. “But we are waiting for the official announcement on how long that protection is going to last.”

The Trump administration has yet to post a notice in the Federal Register, and under the statute, if the Homeland Security secretary doesn’t decide to renew or terminate a TPS designation 60 days before the expiration date, the protection is automatically extended for six months. That means, Palma says, “If they were to interpret the law based on how other presidents have interpreted it before, Salvadorans should be protected for at least six months.”

But Palma and other advocates worry Trump could still try to terminate TPS for El Salvador. The administration has previously moved to end TPS for more than a dozen countries, including Venezuela, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court gave Trump the green light to terminate the protection for more than 350,000 Haitians and Syrians, with likely implications for several other nationalities and some 1.3 million recipients.

The justices ruled that the DHS secretary’s decisions about TPS aren’t subject to judicial review, barring most legal challenges against possible violations of the statute. Following the decision, the Trump administration started targeting Haitians for arrest and deportation. As my colleague Laura Morel reported, many are being forced to choose between staying in the United States without legal status or returning to a country experiencing a humanitarian crisis.

DHS didn’t respond to questions about the secretary’s review of protection for El Salvadorans or the status of TPS recipients’ work authorization, only sharing with Mother Jones the same statement that appeared on the website.

The plight of Salvadorans fleeing the country’s violent, twelve-year civil war was a determining factor behind the legislative framework for TPS. When Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990 establishing the humanitarian program, it did so in part to address concerns about the inconsistent nature of—and political bias inherent to—the US government’s practice of suspending deportations that benefited certain nationalities but not others. 

Throughout the 1980s, the United States had funded El Salvador’s bloody civil war, providing its military-led government with $1 million a day in aid to fight a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups. In keeping with its Cold War foreign policy interests, the Reagan administration then denied protection to the vast majority of Salvadorans fleeing the country, characterizing them as economic migrants.

Years of grassroots organizing had put the issue of Salvadoran refugees at the center of the debate. Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, the Immigration Act of 1990 explicitly designated Salvadorans for protection, and they became the first group to be granted TPS. Although that protection ended in 1992, El Salvador was later designated again in 2001, after two devastating earthquakes made it impossible for Salvadorans in the United States to return safely to their home country.

“It was the Salvadoran community that actually pushed for the creation of TPS,” says Abel Nuñez, executive director at the Central American Resources Center. “It wouldn’t exist without our community, and now they’re losing this protection that has helped so many other nations.”

Arnoldo Díaz was one of the young organizers advocating for what would become TPS. As a leader of the student reform movement in El Salvador, he was considered a national security threat by the government, and he fled the country in 1982 at the behest of his family. When I met Díaz last year in Silver Spring, Maryland, he recalled how his best friend died in his arms after getting shot at a demonstration to support an oil factory strike. “I’m not the first one, and I’m not going to be the last one to die in this struggle,” he told Díaz, who later survived an ambush by a death squad. “Just promise me that you’ll never give up on our people and will never stop fighting.” 

In 1987, an immigration judge granted Díaz political asylum, despite the US government’s efforts to deport him back to Central America. “It always gives me goosebumps when I remember it,” he said of the courtroom packed with supporters. Díaz, who became a US citizen in 1995, has kept the promise to his friend to continue fighting.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Díaz says of the current situation. “Keeping people in limbo like that is psychological torture to push people to self-deport.” A co-coordinator with the National TPS Alliance, Díaz said the organization is hosting a legal clinic and offering family preparedness advice, including on how parents can use a “power of attorney” to give temporary custody of US citizen children to other caretakers in the event they have to leave the country. “We don’t want to tell people to give up because we are not giving up,” he says. “But also be ready just in case because you never know.”

TPS for El Salvador has been renewed several times over the years, making it one of the longest-running designations of all nationalities. Having been shielded from deportation for more than two decades, TPS holders from El Salvador have deep roots in US communities. More than 30,000 of them live in the Washington, DC, metro area.

The uncertainty around the future of the program means Salvadorans with TPS are preparing for different scenarios. “Before the announcement, the level of anxiety was already increasing because they didn’t know what they could do,” Nuñez says. “People who did not want to be here in violation of the law were already making plans to leave the country…so they’re still very concerned.”

Without clarity on how much longer they may have valid protected status, TPS holders may encounter challenges in obtaining driver’s licenses. They also have questions about employment authorization. “There are employers that are saying, ‘No, I can’t keep you working. I need to know that you are authorized to work, and therefore come back when you have the proper documentation,’” Palma says.

Palma has lived in the United States since leaving El Salvador in 1998 and was granted TPS in 2001. Like so many TPS holders, he lives in a mixed-status household; he has four US citizen children, and his wife is a legal permanent resident. Depending on what happens to TPS, he says his family is wondering if they should wait before buying a new car, or even if they should sell their home. “We have to be prepared for whatever happens,” he says.

The Trump administration has repeatedly argued that TPS is supposed to be temporary and should only last as long as conditions in the country remain unsafe for people to return. The State Department’s advisory for El Salvador puts it at the lowest level of risk for travelers, citing a decline in crime and gang activity. But international organizations have long decried widespread human rights violations under Trump-aligned Nayib Bukele’s strongman rule and state of exception. Earlier this year, a group of experts found the violations committed by the Salvadoran government—imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance—may amount to crimes against humanity.

Palma doesn’t dispute that TPS was meant to be a reprieve, but he says the circumstances of Salvadorans and other Central Americans are unique because of how long they’ve been in the United States. For Palma, the administration should stop the detention and deportation of Salvadorans while Congress considers a path to legal status for TPS holders. “If somebody from El Salvador has TPS,” Palma explains, “that means they have been doing everything the government has been asking for the last 25 years.”

“Twenty-five years is not temporary,” Díaz says. “25 years is a lifetime. They’ve put all their youth into this country. We can’t just tell them, pick up your stuff, close your business, take your children, and go home.”

Fonte: Mother Jones Magazine