Title: Trump Administration Says That Nearly 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave - The New York Times
Headings: Trump Administration Says That Nearly 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave
Trump Administration Says That Nearly 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave
Omar Salinas has Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to U.S. immigrants from countries crippled by disaster or war. The Trump administration has announced that it will end the program.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: U.S. Ends Protections for Salvadorans

Content: 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 program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States 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 United States illegally. The decision came just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians lost protections granted after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, and it suggested that others in the program, namely Hondurans, may soon lose them as well. Nicaraguans lost their protections last year. Immigrant advocates and the El Salvadoran government had pleaded for the United States to extend the program, as it has several times since 2001. A sense of dread gripped Salvadorans and their employers in California, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere. “We had hope 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 United States and owns a mobile home. Listen to ‘The Daily’: U.S. Ends Protections for Salvadorans
The Trump administration has said that hundreds of thousands of people who were granted temporary protection from deportation in 2001 must leave.