The real Trump immigration agenda can be found in El Salvador
President Donald J. Trump met Tuesday with Congressional Republicans and Democrats as part of an effort to work out a deal on immigration…
President Donald J. Trump met Tuesday with Congressional Republicans and Democrats as part of an effort to work out a deal on immigration that would extend a deferred action program that protected undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
During the meeting, as reported by The New York Times, Trump
appeared open to negotiating a sweeping immigration deal that would eventually grant millions of undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, declaring that he was willing to ‘take the heat’ politically for an approach that seemed to flatly contradict the anti-immigration stance that charged his political rise.
His seeming shift on immigration has won some praise, but its difficult to take him seriously given the actions taken by his administration to date. Just yesterday, for instance, his administration ended a program that granted temporary status for 200,000 Salvadorans who had been allowed to live in the states legally since 2001 when the country was wrecked by a pair of earthquakes.
Salvadoran and immigrant-rights groups were critical of the move, which is far more indicative of Trump administration policies than the language he’s been using toward Dreamers.
Patricia Campos-Medina, a volunteer with the National TPS Alliance NJ Committee, told me via email that the move will force the “200,000 Salvadorans who have lived legally in the USA for 20-plus years.” They “will go back to a life of insecurity as they will face the threat of deportation.”
Like Trump’s reversal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, the program that granted about 800,000 undocumented immigrants temporary protection from deportation, the administration’s action on TPS is indicative of an administration that lacks regard for immigrants.
“This is just a continuation of (Trump’s) anti-Immigrant political electoral politics,” Campos-Medina added.
Blanca Molina, an El Salvadorian refugee and one of the founders of the Comité En Unión para Salvadoreños, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the rights of immigrants, called ending TPS “unconscionable.” Most were fleeing “dangerous situations,” including both the natural disasters that triggered the TPS designation and the gang and other violence that has gripped the region. These immigrants, she said, “have jobs, bought houses, and became tax-paying members of American society.”
“The majority have married, often to American citizens, and have American-born children,” she said. “Those families now face the draconian choice of either leaving their American families behind or bringing them into a dangerous situation in El Salvador.”
The ending of the TPS — like the ending of DACA — will mean not only potential deportation, but the loss of work permits and driver’s licenses. It also creates uncertainty for U.S.-born children of TPS holders.
“What will happen to them if their parents are deported?” she asked. The answer: They likely would go into the foster system or, more likely, they will be forced into the shadows with their parents, who will be forced back into “a life as an undocumented worker because they will not leave their kids behind unless they are forced to by forced deportations.”
The Trump administration says conditions in El Salvador have changed and that the “originating conditions … required by statute” that were “caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen, in her announcement, described the changes this way:
Following the 2001 earthquake, El Salvador received a significant amount of international aid to assist in its recovery efforts, including millions of dollars dedicated to emergency and long-term assistance. Many reconstruction projects have now been completed. Schools and hospitals damaged by the earthquakes have been reconstructed and repaired, homes have been rebuilt, and money has been provided for water and sanitation and to repair earthquake damaged roads and other infrastructure. The substantial disruption of living conditions caused by the earthquake no longer exist.
Additionally, in recent years, the U.S. government has been repatriating individuals back to El Salvador — more than 39,000 in the last two years — demonstrating that the temporary inability of El Salvador to adequately return their nationals after the earthquake has been addressed.
El Salvador formally requested that the Trump administration renew the TPS designation, and the nation is considered among the more dangerous in the dangerous in the world.
“According to the U.N.,” Campos-Medina said. “El Salvador has made improvements in their poverty index, but continues to be among the most violent countries in Latin America. Gangs violence drives migration of children who are running away from gang violence — yet, we are telling adults to go back and try to make a life there.”
Lorena Telles, who participated in Tuesday’s Comité En Unión para Salvadoreños protest, said in a press release that she’s been living in New Jersey for 23 years with her husband and three daughters. She fled El Salvador to get away from rampant crime, giving up a job as a professor.
It’s worse now. A couple I knew moved back recently to El Salvador to live out their retirement years. Shortly after they moved back, they were both killed at their home in a neighborhood that is thought to be safe. Residents go out and don’t know if they will ever make it back home.
Men look for young women to rape and kidnap like they did with my two older daughters. They are here after seeking asylum. This is not the way I would have wanted them to be here, but I am happy they are alive. I am heartbroken to know we may be separated.
This is the context in which Tuesday’s meeting needs to be considered. TPS, the DACA termination (now on hold), the Muslim entry ban, are all direct and concrete examples of Trump’s approach to immigration. His words on Tuesday, while potentially good news, will hold no meaning until his actions change, until he drops his plan for a wall, until he takes the well being of immigrant community seriously.