Salvadorans on Long Island with TPS can stay in U.S. after feds put freeze on ending their protection

The Trump administration abruptly reversed course on Wednesday and put a last-minute freeze on an executive order that would have removed legal immigration status from 170,000 Salvadorans nationwide, including thousands on Long Island.

The Department of Homeland Security said it was holding back on enforcing the order that would have ended the Temporary Protected Status designation for the Salvadorans. The order had been scheduled to go into effect on Wednesday. TPS has allowed them to live and work legally in the United States, in many cases for decades.

The freeze should, for now, shield Salvadorans with TPS from deportation.

"An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time," DHS said in a statement on Wednesday. "Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection."

The department provided no further details.

Immigrant advocates said they were pleased with the move, though they added it was a corrective to federal immigration policies they view as disastrous and wondered how long the freeze would last.

"With its statement today, DHS is creating further confusion and chaos," said Nadia Marin-Molina, the Nassau County-based co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. "Salvadoran TPS holders, who have been building their lives on Long Island for decades, should be appreciated and given permanent protections, not treated as disposable."

"While the current crisis comes from this president, the truth is that members of Congress from both parties have had opportunities for decades to protect TPS holders from many countries and they have failed to do so," she said. "It is time for that to change."

TPS holders on LI

Long Island is home to an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Salvadorans with TPS, advocates said.

TPS is a legal immigration status granted to people fleeing civil strife, natural disasters or extraordinary crises in their homeland. Recipients receive work permits and generally are safe from deportation, though the status is not designed to lead to permanent residency or a green card. TPS can be renewed by the government up to 18 months at a time.

President Donald Trump and other critics said the program was intended to provide only short-term relief and was one aspect of an out-of-control immigration system.

Many Salvadoran TPS holders have taken jobs in restaurants, factories and other businesses that employers say few others are willing to work. 

"I think Trump is completely undercutting business in the United States by pulling out legal status for hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Haitians and other nationalities," said Patrick Young, a professor of immigration law at Hofstra University Law School. "It’s a terrible thing that he is doing."

"These are not people who just came last year," he said of the Salvadorans. "These are people who have been in the United States for at least a quarter of a century."

 Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) said he supported a freeze on the move to eliminate TPS for Salvadorans and urged officials to create a "runway" that would give employers time to transition to other workers as they let go of Salvadorans with TPS.

"I support the administration's efforts to restore integrity to our immigration system and return TPS to its original purpose as a temporary humanitarian protection — not a permanent immigration status," LaLota wrote in a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

But "I respectfully ask that it provide American employers with a reasonable, clearly defined runway before associated employment authorization expires," he wrote. "Employers who followed the law and relied on work authorization lawfully issued by the federal government should have sufficient time to recruit, hire, and train replacement workers."

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), in his own letter to Mullin, urged the administration to keep TPS for Salvadorans.

"Termination of TPS for El Salvador would cause billions of dollars of harm to the U.S. economy and labor force and would rip apart the families of U.S. citizen children," he wrote.

Ongoing uncertainty over the program is "inhumane and un-American," he said.

If the administration ends TPS, he asked for a two-year transition period. "Families who have built their lives here deserve at least that much time to prepare," he said. 

Although supported by some, Trump has also come under fire for an aggressive nationwide immigration crackdown. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens who were protesting in Minneapolis in January.

The administration has backed off on high-profile enforcement surges since then, though agents in the month of July arrested a record-breaking nearly 50,000 immigrants living in the country illegally.