Mayor Bass Decries End of Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, in an announcement Wednesday, decried the end of Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of Salvadorans.

Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows immigrants from countries with armed conflict and natural disasters to come and work in the United States, expired for people from El Salvador Wednesday, leaving an estimated 170,000 immigrants and their 150,000 children in limbo nationwide.

The Temporary Protected Status program for Salvadorans typically had been renewed every 18 months. But after the Department of Homeland Security terminated TPS for about 300,000 Haitians in July, many Salvadorans are preparing for the possibility of having to leave the U.S.

Bass criticized the Trump administration’s decision to let the program end with no contingency plan.

”California is home to roughly 55,000 Salvadoran TPS beneficiaries, including thousands here in Los Angeles,” Bass said. ”Stripping away their legal status and work authorization puts their livelihoods, homes, businesses and futures at risk. Parents could be separated from their American-born children, workers could lose their jobs and families that have contributed to our communities for decades could be plunged into fear and uncertainty. There was no crisis requiring this decision. There was a choice, and the administration chose disruption over stability, fear over certainty and politics over people.”

Bass said that Salvadorans are an indispensable part of Los Angeles.

”The consequences will ripple across Los Angeles and Southern California, including our hospitals, restaurants, construction sites, small businesses and service industries,” she added. ”Congress must act now. People who have lived, worked, raised families and contributed to this country for decades deserve more than temporary protection that can be used as a political bargaining chip. They deserve a permanent path to citizenship.”

Bas added that the city will take action to protect Salvadorans.

”Los Angeles will not stand by while our neighbors are pushed into the shadows,” she said. ”Salvadoran Angelenos are not outsiders to this city. They are Los Angeles. And when their families are threatened, our city stands with them. We will stand with them in this fight, and we will not let them face it alone.”