The Washington Post, October 2, 2018: American girl: A story of immigration, fear and fortitude
The Trump administration was canceling temporary protected status for El Salvador, a government program that had allowed Emily’s parents, both Salvadoran natives, to live and work legally in the United States for the past 17 years. According to the news, on Sept. 9, 2019, her mother, Maria Rivas, and her father, Jose, would be ordered to leave the country.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen to us,” she told me a few months later. “We’d been so secluded from this. We’d always thought we’ll be okay.” But now she realized that her parents had only been feigning optimism about the future since Donald Trump was elected president. “They can’t hide it anymore,” she remembered thinking. “They can’t say nothing is going to happen.”
This is not a scene anyone could have imagined in 1990 when Congress created temporary protected status, or TPS, a category of humanitarian relief for foreigners residing in the United States who could not return to their native countries because of environmental disasters, armed conflict or “other extraordinary temporary conditions.” Most people from TPS-designated countries who had a generally clean record were eligible, even if, like Emily’s parents, they’d originally come here as undocumented immigrants.
As of October 2017, there were roughly 300,000 TPS beneficiaries from 10 countries living in the United States. These individuals came from a handful of Central American and African countries, along with Haiti, Syria, Yemen and Nepal. But by far the largest group were Salvadorans — close to 200,000 — who were granted TPS by George W. Bush in 2001, following two massive earthquakes that ravaged their country.
Salvadorans were given 18 months to live and work legally in the United States, after which the U.S. government would assess the viability of their returning home. But 18 months later, the Bush administration determined El Salvador had not adequately recovered from the disaster, so it extended TPS again, this time for 12 months. The following year, the administration extended TPS for another 18 months. When Barack Obama became president in 2009, his administration extended TPS again. And then again. By Jan. 8, 2018, TPS for Salvadorans had been extended a total of 11 times. Trump issued a 12th extension, saying it would be the last.
Over nearly two decades, Salvadoran TPS recipients settled into American life. They found employment, fell in love and married. Many of them bought homes and started businesses. They also gave birth to roughly 192,700 American-born children, some 38,000 of whom live in the District, Maryland and Virginia.
In March, the ACLU of Southern California, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the law firm Sidley Austin filed a lawsuit against the federal government for canceling TPS for El Salvador and other countries. This wasn’t the first such suit, but it was unique in this respect: Five of the plaintiffs were the U.S. citizen children of TPS holders. According to the suit, forcing school-aged American kids to be separated from their parents would “impose extraordinary harm.” The assumption is that American children have a right to live in their native country, but that once TPS ends, only familial separation would make that possible.
Quality of life for American kids is our foremost concern. Can they continue to get the education they need, the health care they need? Fundamentally, it comes down to trauma. We are contemplating ripping them away [from their homes] or forcing them into the shadows. How will this impact their development and their ability to be contributing members of society? The federal government is creating a crisis because of their positions.
