Amid Trump's immigration crackdown, a program geared to Salvadorans remains intact

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Trump administration has taken aim at immigration programs geared to Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.
An initiative geared to Salvadorans, however, remains intact, and some Utah attorneys point to Trump's seemingly solid relationship with El Salvador's president.
Moves to eliminate the programs for certain immigrants are the focus of ongoing court battles.

SALT LAKE CITY — Many Venezuelan immigrants in the United States face an uncertain future as the Trump administration presses for an end to programs that have allowed them to lawfully remain and work in the country.

The administration's moves to end humanitarian parole programs geared to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans likewise put the U.S. status of immigrants from those nations on shaky ground.

Unaffected so far, though, have been immigrants from El Salvador, at least some of them. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have seemingly forged a solid relationship, and Utah immigration attorneys suspect that may factor in the different treatment of an immigration program geared to a pocket of immigrants from the Central American nation.

"It's got to be political," said Ogden immigration attorney Jonathan Bachison. Trump has maintained a program granting certain Salvadorans temporary protected status here, he suspects, "because he's getting something from the El Salvadoran president."

Indeed, seemingly underpinning the relationship between Trump and Bukele, El Salvador is housing Venezuelan and other immigrants deported from the United States as part of Trump's immigration crackdown at the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. Bukele built the expansive prison, with a capacity of 40,000, to house El Salvador's notorious gang members and other hardened criminals in a bid, largely successful many say, to improve safety in the nation.

The United States is paying El Salvador $6 million to house the immigrant deportees in the center, according to CNN.

A protester walks past a mock prison during a demonstration against President Donald Trump's use of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center prison for people deported from the United States outside the Salvadoran Embassy in Washington on April 14. (Photo: Nathan Howard, AP)

Bukele "just locked them all up, kind of like what he's doing with those Venezuelan guys," Bachison said. That's why the U.S. government turned to Bukele, he suspects, "because he had success doing it, and it brought the crime rate way down in El Salvador."

The U.S. government's temporary protected status program for eligible Salvadorans, which dates to 2001, is older than Venezuela's, created during President Joe Biden's term, noted Lehi immigration attorney Jacob Tuimaualuga. Temporary protected status is available to immigrants from a handful of countries contending with armed conflicts, natural disasters and other dire situations.

Whatever the case, he thinks "it's no coincidence that we have a very friendly relationship with El Salvador" and said it seems like U.S. government talk isn't as harsh toward El Salvador. While the temporary protected status program geared to Salvadorans remains intact, the Venezuelan program faces elimination under Trump, though the efforts, on hold for now, are focus of a court battle.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "has determined it is contrary to the national interest to permit the covered Venezuelan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States," reads the Feb. 5 notice on the Venezuelan temporary protected status program. The notice noted the presence in the United States of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and said U.S. interests are best served "by curtailing policies that facilitate or encourage illegal and destabilizing migration."

Noem likewise offered critical words about the humanitarian parole programs geared to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in pushing for their elimination. Those efforts are also on hold due to a court fight. "These programs do not serve a significant public benefit, are not necessary to reduce levels of illegal immigration, did not sufficiently mitigate the domestic effects of illegal immigration," Noem wrote in the March 25 order to dismantle them.

Bachison doesn't begrudge the fact that the Salvadoran temporary protected status program remains. And to be sure, Salvadoran gang members have been among the many people the Trump administration says face deportation. The attorney just laments moves to eliminate the other programs given the legitimate claims of those seeking refuge in the United States. "It all just feels like a game to me," Bachison said.

South Jordan immigration attorney Carlos Trujillo, too, expressed concern over moves to eliminate the immigration programs geared to countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Immigration policy at times aims to serve those fleeing repressive regimes, and the three countries are led by strong-arm, socialist or socialist-leaning governments.

Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are "the evil triangle of the Caribbean at the moment that stands for communism and all these things, and we are taking away protections for these people," Trujillo said. Yet immigration programming for El Salvador, relatively stable under Bukele, seemingly isn't getting scrutiny.

"It makes no sense unless you bring politics into it, and then you have an answer for why they have't even revoked it, talked about it or even attempted," he said.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.