{"id":74184,"date":"2018-12-31T12:45:49","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T18:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago?p=74184&preview=true&preview_id=74184"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:05:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T19:05:57","slug":"permanently-temporary-400000-immigrants-many-in-the-u-s-for-decades-could-lose-their-protected-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/permanently-temporary-400000-immigrants-many-in-the-u-s-for-decades-could-lose-their-protected-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Permanently temporary: 400,000 immigrants, many in the U.S. for decades, could lose their protected status"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Becky Dernbach<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

The sounds of chirping birds and fluttering wings punctuate the conversation at Adilio\u2019s house. His daughters rescued the smooth white dove and the small green parakeet from the street, he says. Some of the children are grown now, and some are still in school. He always wanted them to grow up speaking both English and Spanish, to get an education, and to love their new country as their own. And he wanted them to all be together.<\/p>\n

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The family paloma, or dove, takes flight from Adilio’s daughter’s arm. (Becky Dernbach\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Adilio (not his real name) left El Salvador the first time in 1993, a veteran of his country\u2019s civil war, his wife was pregnant with their first daughter. As their family grew, Adilio was away for years at a time working construction in Chicago. After years of separation, he saved enough money to bring his family to join him in the U.S. But now, as President Donald Trump\u2019s administration attempts to terminate Temporary Protected Status for immigrants, Adilio worries he will be forced to leave them again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would take years off my life, to separate from my family,\u201d Adilio said in Spanish, his voice breaking.<\/p>\n

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Adilio’s daughter cradles the family parakeet. (Becky Dernbach\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Temporary protected status was intended, as its name implies, to be temporary: a relief for people from countries experiencing ongoing armed conflict or natural disaster who cannot return home safely. Salvadorans in the United States were designated for TPS in 2001 following a series of devastating earthquakes. Their TPS status was routinely renewed for decades by Republican and Democratic presidents. Recipients of TPS have a temporary legal status in which they are authorized to work and protected from deportation, but the program provides no pathway to citizenship.<\/p>\n

But the Trump administration has steadily been announcing terminations of TPS for more than 400,000 people from El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan.<\/p>\n

Judge Edward Chen issued an injunction Oct. 3 in federal court temporarily blocking the termination for TPS holders from four of these countries, including El Salvador, citing evidence the government\u2019s decision may have roots in \u201canimus against non-white, non-European immigrants.\u201d A separate lawsuit pending in federal court in Massachusetts also includes Hondurans.<\/a><\/p>\n