A New Decision By Trump’s Administration Puts Hundreds of Thousands in Danger
Gangs, locally known as Maras, threatened to take the boys away and recruit them. Photo: Christina Simons/MSF
You may have heard the term TPS used a lot this week in the news.
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allows temporary lawful status and work authorization in the US to people whose countries have been affected by armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary events.
Salvadorans allowed to live and work in the US through TPS now have until September 9, 2019 to leave the US or face deportation.
The decision by the Trump Administration to end Temporary Protected Status for approximately 200,000 Salvadorans living in the US threatens to directly endanger their lives.
Policy groups and activists took to twitter:
Our Doctors Without Borders teams regularly witness the impact of violence on Salvadorans through medical and mental health programs that treat people traveling along dangerous migration routes throughout Mexico.
Most of the migrants treated by MSF are from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA). Many are fleeing unrelenting violence, death threats, and gang recruitment.
In recent years, rates of violent death in El Salvador have been higher than in all countries suffering armed conflict except for Syria.
In El Salvador, 6,650 intentional homicides were reported in 2015, reaching a staggering murder rate of 103 per 100,000 inhabitants that year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Data from the UNODC shows that homicidal violence in the NTCA resulted in considerably more civilian casualties than in any other countries, including those with armed conflicts or war.
Homicide rates declined in 2016 in El Salvador, but they remain among the highest in the world.
In recent years, rates of violent death in El Salvador have been higher than in all countries suffering armed conflict except for Syria.
“In this context, it is unfathomable to send people in the United States back to El Salvador,” said Jason Cone, MSF USA’s executive director.
“As a medical humanitarian organization treating people fleeing murder and violence in El Salvador, we urge the Trump Administration to reconsider this decision and extend TPS for Salvadorans living in the US.”
Back in November, at a panel moderated by NPR’s Kelly McEvers, co-host of All Things Considered, we discussed the impact of border closures and other restrictive measures for displaced populations fleeing Central America.
Several of our panelists talked about the risks migrants face if they were sent back.
“What I’ve found doing research on those who were sent back, is that those who feared being raped or murdered were in fact, raped or murdered,” Elizabeth Kennedy stated.
Kennedy is a social scientist who focuses on the experiences and needs of child, youth and forced migrants and their families. In the video tweet below, she details a horrific story of her interactions with a boy and his family who returned to El Salvador.
“The son wrote me that his father had been murdered. It angered me. We [The United States] have agreed to a principle of non-refoulement which is that we will not return people to harm, torture, or their death. And we returned that father to his death.”
She continued, “I decided to start compiling other cases. I think it’s reported a lot less than it is recurring. So when people say, ‘Send them back’, what you’re saying is you’re okay with that person dying. You’re okay with the implication that it will have on all of the family. It’s not just that that father is dead. But that son is not in school anymore, he’s not with his family. It’s a cycle that’s allowed to continue, further fueling the problem.”
After the TPS decision was announced on January 8th, Cone said in an MSF statement, “Congress must find a permanent solution that protects hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans from deportation.”
For far too many of the people affected by this decision, this is a matter of life and death.
