Washington, .- The Government extended today until January 2020 the protection of the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for the beneficiaries of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan, in compliance with a judicial resolution.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified Thursday that it had adopted this measure, which will be made public officially tomorrow in the Federal Register, which already today offered on its website an unofficial version of the text.
In the document, DHS indicated that it automatically extends the TPS for nationals of Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador and Sudan until January 2, 2020.
The TPS is a migration program created in 1990 with which the Government granted extraordinary permits to citizens of countries affected by armed conflicts or natural disasters.
In recent years, TPS beneficiaries have seen their permit renewed automatically for periods of 18 months, but the government of President Donald Trump decided to reassess the conditions that justified granting the program.
Consequently, in the last year, the president ordered the TPS beneficiaries – some 263,000 Salvadorans, 86,000 Hondurans, 58,000 Haitians, 5,300 Nicaraguans and a thousand Sudanese – to prepare their “exit” from the US. or look for a legal immigration alternative.
DHS explained in the notice that the decision is made “to ensure continued compliance with the prior injunction of the US District Court for the Northern District of California.”
Therefore, “the beneficiaries of the TPS designations for Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador will retain their TPS while the preliminary injunction remains in effect.”
Last October, a judge of that court, based in San Francisco (California), blocked the end of this immigration protection, ordered by Washington for Sudan, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Haiti.
At that time, the magistrate Edward Chen, ordered the blockade of the suspension of the TPS to consider that it supposed an “irreparable damage” for immigrants and their families who had to leave the country.
The case of Honduras, which is outside the measure of the DHS, is carried by the same court, together with the TPS receivers of Nepal, in a separate case from the previous one.
The US Embassy In El Salvador, he issued a statement in Spanish stating that “the people benefited and registered under TPS do not need to make any payment or submit any application to maintain their TPS benefits until January 2, 2020.”
Even so, he warned that if in this time the courts issue a decision that supports the cancellation of the TPS this protection would end within 120 days from the entry into force of the termination order of this benefit or on the date previously announced by DHS, which in the case of El Salvador would be September 9, 2019.
The reactions to the DHS decision were immediate.
The organization FWD.us welcomed the measure but recalled that “this should not slow down Congress efforts to permanently protect these communities that face an imminent risk as a result of the actions of the Trump Administration.”
In the case of El Salvador, the United States granted the TPS in 2001 following a series of earthquakes, while Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998 went after the devastating hurricane Mitch through Central America.
Haiti benefited from the TPS since 2010 due to the catastrophic earthquake that left some 300,000 dead and plunged the country into chaos, while Sudan was awarded in 2014 by the South Sudan conflict. (EFEUSA)
