House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) today released a joint statement with Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), after the Trump Administration announced its decision to strip Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Salvadorans:
“President Trump’s decision to strip Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Salvadorans, many of whom have legally lived and worked in this country for decades, is shameful and wrong.
“Over the past years, El Salvador has been gripped in a crisis of extreme violence. El Salvador has among the highest murder rates in the world, including one of the highest rates of femicide. In 2015, a woman was murdered every 16 hours in El Salvador. Further compounding the sense of fear generated by these murders is the inability of the Salvadoran government to hold persecutors accountable. From 2010 to 2013, 95 percent of murders in the region were unsolved or unprosecuted.
“Yet in one stroke, today’s decision from President Trump rips legal status from nearly 200,000 Salvadorans, many of whom have spent decades legally in the United States, starting families, working, studying, and contributing to their communities. It forces them to reconcile the danger that will face their families and loved ones upon return to El Salvador, with the prospect of tearing their families apart, and the uncertainty of undocumented status in the United States. This will not just affect Salvadorans, but also their U.S. citizen spouses and children, the American employers and employees who depend on them, and the countless communities across the Unites States they helped build and live in today.
“In the short term, Trump may appease his base with this decision, but the continued degradation of our humanitarian immigration policies will have long-lasting impact on the success and prosperity of our Nation. Economic analysis suggests that today’s decision to deport Salvadoran TPS holders will cost the United States $31 billion over the next 10 years.
“Much like the decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, today’s TPS announcement is an indication that the Trump Administration’s grievances extend to all immigrants, including those with legal work authorization. It is clear this Administration’s only immigration policy priority is mass deportation.”
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