IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been allowed to live in the United States for more than a decade must leave the country, two government officials familiar with the decision said on Monday [1-8-18]. It is the Trump administration’s latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date.
The officials, who declined to be identified because they were speaking before an official announcement on the decision later Monday morning, said that the administration was 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…
In the days leading up to the decision, immigrant advocates and the El Salvadoran government pleaded for the United States to extend the program, as it has several times since 2001, saying that conditions in El Salvador were still dire. A sense of dread gripped Salvadorans and their employers in California, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere.”
-Miriam Jordan, “Trump Administration Rules That Nearly 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave, Officials Say,” The New York Times online, Jan. 8, 2018