HOUSTON (CN) — The American Dream is fast approaching its expiration date for thousands of law-abiding immigrants who will become illegal aliens when the clock runs out on their protected status. Three shared their stories with Courthouse News and told what awaits them if they are forced to return to their home countries.
Ochoa, a construction worker in San Francisco, has lived in the United States since 1994, when he fled El Salvador at age 18, driven out by civil war and guerillas who tried to recruit him to fight U.S.-backed soldiers.
“When I came here I got the news that one of my mom’s sisters got killed by gang members in the middle of the night. She was raped in front of her two kids. El Salvador is really bad,” Ochoa said.
He applied for political asylum, but was placed in deportation proceedings. Three earthquakes that rocked El Salvador in early 2001, displacing 1.3 million people, gave him an opening to stay legally in the United States.
The earthquakes led the U.S. government to grant Temporary Protected Status to Salvadorans who were uprooted by the earthquakes, or, like Ochoa, were already living in the U.S.
The government grants such protection to some foreigners who were in the United States when natural disasters or wars prevented them from going home.
With their TPS status renewed several times over the years by Republican and Democratic presidents, more than 250,000 Salvadorans have laid down roots in the United States. But President Trump has moved to sever those ties.
Trump’s administration terminated the status for Salvadorans effective Sept. 9, 2019. The move makes no sense to Ochoa, who at 42 has lived more than half his life in the United States.
“We’re not criminals,” Ochoa said. “We comply with the law. They know we don’t have any felonies. They got the best of the best. If someone from TPS gets a felony or something like that, gets in trouble, they don’t give you the TPS anymore and you get deported.”
TPS beneficiaries pay the government $495 every 18 months to renew their status, a process in which the FBI checks their backgrounds and takes their fingerprints and they get work permits.
Ochoa is most worried about what a return to El Salvador would mean for his two sons, both U.S. citizens, who have never been to the country.
He said his 11-year-old son has allergies that build up fluid in his lungs, and he and his wife have had to rush him to the hospital several times in the middle of the night. The Ochoas just learned their 8-year-old son is allergic to cashews.
“We had to run to the hospital. He got one EpiPen injection in the leg,” Ochoa said.
He said hospitals in El Salvador are not staffed like they are here, and people who go to Salvadoran hospitals for emergencies have to wait two or three days before doctors can see them.
“It’s really scary. My kids both need immediate medical attention. And if they don’t give that to them they could die,” he said.