President Donald Trump’s administration extended temporary protected status to the Salvadorans living in the U.S. through January 2021.
The extension was announced by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has prioritized continued protection for Salvadorans in the U.S. in immigration-policy talks with Washington.“They said it was impossible. That the Salvadoran Government could not do anything,” he wrote in a Twitter post that included a video of him announcing it jointly with Ronald Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to the country. “But after all, thank God, TPS was achieved.”“This is an acknowledgment of the achievements and good work of the government of President Nayib Bukele,” Mr. Johnson said.
Salvadorans can receive another “year of protection once a court battle over the matter concludes.” WSJ continued:
A federal judge in San Francisco last year temporarily halted the administration’s terminations of TPS, allowing the affected immigrants to remain, pending litigation. An appeals-court decision in that case is expected soon, but that will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court.Under the federal court’s decision, the government would still likely have honored protections for Salvadorans while litigation over its attempt to end TPS continues.Should a court rule in its favor, the administration had already agreed to give affected immigrants a three-month window to leave the U.S. Monday’s agreement with the Salvadoran government would extend Salvadorans’ time to leave to as long as a year.
Since January 2018, the media has made quips at Trump, implying he wanted to send Salvadorans to the curb. I had to set them straight in one of my blogs.
I mentioned in my January blog that the protections end in September 2019.
A lot goes into TPS decisions. Officials decide who receives TPS “in cases where the U.S. government determines a population’s home country is too dangerous to return.”
El Salvador’s murder rate has gone down, but “remains one of the highest in the world.” The country also faces rampant poverty and gang violence.
It also helps that El Salvador has expressed a desire to work with America.
Over the summer, the media published pictures of dead migrants and placed the blame on Trump. However, Bukele pushed back and blamed his country’s policies:
“People don’t flee their homes because they want to, people flee their homes because they feel they have to,” he told the BBC in the capital, San Salvador.“Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.“We can blame any other country but what about our blame? What country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault.”
Bukele vowed to work with the U.S. and other countries to find ways to make El Salvador prosperous and a country people do not want to leave.
It takes time, though. A few weeks after Bukele’s remarks, Trump announced his administration reached a “safe third country” deal with Guatemala in regards to migrants from El Salvador and Honduras:
The agreement would require that migrants traveling through Guatemala on the way to the U.S. seek asylum in Guatemala instead of at the U.S.-Mexico border. President Trump joined Guatemala’s interior minister, Enrique Degenhart, and Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan in the Oval Office to sign what White House officials said was a safe third-country agreement.“They can make a protection claim, if they would like, in Guatemala,” Mr. McAleenan said. “So, if they arrive in the U.S. not having availed themselves of that opportunity, they will be returned to Guatemala.”Mr. Trump said the agreement will help address “the crippling crisis on our border.” He added that the U.S. and Guatemala now “get along.”
After that agreement, the “State Department eased its travel advisory for” El Salvador.
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