‘The United States could be sending people to their deaths’ - Marselha Gonçalves Margerin

Responding to today’s announcement by the USA’s Department of Homeland Security that “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) designation for over 250,000 people from El Salvador in the USA has been ended, Marselha Gonçalves Margerin, Amnesty International USA’s Americas Advocacy Director, said:

“The end of TPS for El Salvador is a devastating betrayal for thousands of families who arrived at the United States seeking safety as well as their US citizen children.

“If forced to return to El Salvador, mothers, fathers and children could face extortion, kidnapping, coerced service to gangs, and sexual violence. 

“By returning TPS recipients to El Salvador, the United States could be sending people to their deaths.”

Last week, Amnesty International USA wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, urging her to extend Temporary Protected Status designation to El Salvador for another 18 months.

Along with Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador is one of the countries in the troubled “Northern Triangle” of Central America which have some of the world’s highest murder rates: 81.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador, 58.9 in Honduras and 27.3 in Guatemala, according to official figures. In a recent report, Amnesty documented how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people from these three countries are at grave risk due to the authorities failing to protect them from discrimination and gender-based violence from criminal gangs and members of the security forces.