For Immediate Release: January 9, 2018
Contact: Ricardo Ramírez, rramirez@advancementproject.org, (202)-728-9557
Washington – The Trump administration announced this week that it will continue purging the United States from immigrant communities, this time by ending temporary protected status (TPS) for those originating from El Salvador. With this announcement the total number of people losing protection under the Trump Administration rises to one million. In response, Advancement Project, a racial justice and civil rights organization, issued the following statement:
“Trump’s latest effort to remove entire immigrant communities from America is viciously callous,” said Judith Browne Dianis, Executive Director of Advancement Project’s national office. “This affects neighbors, workers, and family members with deep ties to the communities where they belong here in the United States. These actions cannot be separated from the broader racist trend coming from the Trump administration: Decimating communities of color, immigrant and non-immigrant alike.”
Ending TPS designation for El Salvador impacts approximately 200,000 Salvadorans who have been able to legally work and live in the U.S. since March 2001. In its decision, DHS fails to acknowledge current conditions in El Salvador, including narco-trafficking violence, gang violence, and gender-based violence. The country is one of the world’s most dangerous places outside of a war zone.
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Advancement Project is a multi-racial civil rights organization. Founded by a team of veteran civil rights lawyers in 1999, Advancement Project was created to develop and inspire community-based solutions based on the same high-quality legal analysis and public education campaigns that produced the landmark civil rights victories of earlier eras.