Minneapolis, MN – More than 75 community members and day laborers gathered on Lake Street in Minneapolis to call for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ecuadorians and show their willingness to fight on behalf of their immigrant coworkers and neighbors. During the rally, Lake Street was dense with cars and passersby; the rally was interspersed with their honks, raised fists, and other expressions of support.

TPS is a temporary immigration status for nationals of a particular country. Some currently designated TPS countries include Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, and more. A granting of TPS allows certain nationals from the designated country to remain in the U.S. for two years, apply for a work permit, and receive protection from deportation. The president can choose to renew TPS every two years. Through this rally, MIRAC is calling on President Biden to use his last months in office to grant TPS to Ecuadorians who are fleeing organized crime, violence and the negative impacts of climate change in Ecuador.

As Cory Maria Dack, an Ecuadorian American and member of MIRAC, explains in the rally, “Ecuadorians deserve to live and work and thrive without fear of deportation. Granting them TPS will also benefit the economy. Minnesota currently has an employee shortage. Businesses are reporting a shortage of workers. Ecuadorians are ready to work! Give them the documentation so they can work legally. But more than any other reason, Ecuadorians deserve TPS because we all know that no human is illegal. Every human deserves to live and work and provide for their families!”

The people at the rally also heard from two Ecuadorian day laborers on why TPS is so important. As one day laborer explains, “Why do we come to the United States? We come here because the situation in Ecuador is very difficult. There is a lot of violence. There is corruption. And there is no work. We love our country. But out of necessity we had to make the most difficult decision of our lives to leave our homeland. If one cannot ensure the safety of our family and cannot ensure that there is food for our children, something has to be done.” [Translated from Spanish]

Another day laborer details the frequent challenges that the day laborers face. A pressing issue for all day laborers is the risk of underpayment and wage theft. However, she points out that “for women workers there are other risks as well. For us, we are often paid less because we are women. For us, there is the risk of sexual harassment. At the parada [the location where day laborers wait for work] and on the job.” [Translated from Spanish]

Neil Radford, a union member of Minnesota Federation of Teachers Local 59 and member of Minnesota Workers United, spoke at the rally to express solidarity with Ecuadorian and other immigrants, stating “Immigrants, or our unhoused neighbors, or anyone who struggles and fights every day for their survival and the well being of their loved ones, these people are not our enemies. They do not strip away from our security, or our ability to make a living. Immigrants come here to live in peace, to work and raise families, to find connection and support.”

Radford continued, “We must allow no divisions to be manufactured within the international working class. The only division that matters at all is between those who seek to rule and control, and those who are oppressed and victimized.”

The protest was led by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and featured speakers from first-generation Ecuadorian immigrants, Minnesota Workers United, and Asamblea de Derechos Civiles.

#MinneapolisMN #MIRAC #MNWorkersUnited #AsambleaDeDerechosCiviles #TPS #Ecuador

Minneapolis, MN – Over 50 immigrant rights protesters held a ‘noise demo’ June 8 outside of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office to demand she take action to protect those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) status.

The action was organized by the Minnesota Immigrants Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) to demand that the U.S. Senate pass the American Dream and Promise Act, a bill which would permanently legalize people with DACA, TPS, and DED.

The bill passed in the U.S. House in March and is currently sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety. It will need to pass both the subcommittee, and then the committee, before going on to the full Senate for a vote. Senator Klobuchar sits on both committees.

The protesters held signs reading, “Honk for DACA and TPS,” and “Amy Klobuchar, act on DACA.” People cheered, blew noisemakers, and chanted “Pass the bill,” as many cars and buses honked in support.

The event’s main speaker described her experience as a TPS recipient and demanded legalization for all, asserting that no one should need to be traumatized to be granted U.S. citizenship. After the protest, signs were left outside the building. Passing cars continued to honk in response to the signs, even after the protesters dispersed.

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #SenatorAmyKlobuchar #DACA #TPS

Los Angeles, CA – Over 1000 Salvadorians and allies marched in downtown LA, Jan. 13, to demand Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and residency. The loud and enthusiastic rally denounced Trump for his racist and insulting comments against Africa and El Salvador, pointing out that U.S. interventions have caused misery, poverty and the mass displacement of millions in Central America and Africa.

Led by CARECEN and NDLON, the protest included CHIRLA, UNITE, SEIU, many youth, and a delegation of Centro CSO.

Centro CSO felt it very important to join the protest to show solidarity with the Los Angeles Salvadorian community, which is the largest in the U.S. The rally took place at the historic La Placita, the site of many past rallies. Speakers called for uniting and continuing the fight by organizing protests, building a movement and also voting to defeat the right-wing racist Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

CARECEN called for an effort to work to defeat in Bakersfield, California Congressman and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who attended the Trump ‘shithole’ meeting, where he remained silent.

Centro CSO in Boyle Heights neighborhood has for years fought for the rights of the undocumented and is working with the Legalization for All Network to push for legalization for all, no guest worker programs, and no deportations.

To contact on Facebook: Centro CSO https://www.facebook.com/CentroCSO/

#LosAngelesCA #TPS #TemporaryProtectedStatus

Minneapolis, MN – On Jan. 8, President Trump announced the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for around 200,000 Salvadorans living in the United States. TPS for Salvadorans will be phased out in 18 months. This comes after Trump has already ended TPS for Haitians and Nicaraguans, and soon Hondurans will almost surely lose TPS as well. While the loss of TPS for any country is an injustice, the number of Salvadorans with TPS is more than all other nationalities combined.

The Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Salvadorans is yet another racist and vicious attack in the seemingly nonstop barrage targeting immigrant families. But this is one of the most consequential attacks so far alongside the ending of DACA. Ending TPS for Salvadorans is targeting 200,000 people along with their families in one fell swoop. This is particularly evil because of its scale, because of how long Salvadorans with TPS have been in the U.S. and established deep roots, and because of the U.S. government’s historic and present role in causing mass migration from El Salvador. The U.S. government played a decisive role in causing massive violence in El Salvador which has provoked continual mass migration since the 1980s. Then the U.S. government engages in mass deportation against the people who fled the country that U.S. policies has wrecked.

El Salvador is a country with 6 million people densely packed into a small amount of land. It’s a country whose people have a proud history of heroic resistance against severe injustice and state repression. But now around 500 Salvadorans leave their country every day with the goal of crossing 3 borders on a harrowing journey filled with danger to get to the U.S. Why?

El Salvador is consistently at or near the top in murder and violence rates in the Western Hemisphere. This is largely because of gangs backed by organized crime and powerful figures in the oligarchy that control turf in almost the whole country and have also taken root in neighboring countries like Honduras and Guatemala.

The ongoing violence in El Salvador is like another undeclared civil war that developed on the heels of the U.S.-backed civil war that ended in 1992 which left 75,000 Salvadorans dead. In addition to the large number of people who died during the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s, the US-backed military dictatorship's sweeping repression also caused large numbers of Salvadorans to flee northward to the U.S. Huge Salvadoran communities developed in Los Angeles (which is referred to as El Salvador's '15th department' after the 14 departments of El Salvador) and several other areas of the U.S.

In much of the countryside in El Salvador today, there are mostly old people and women with small children. When people get old enough to leave, massive numbers of them head out for big cities or for the U.S. Think about how bad things must be that people will risk life and limb to get into Trump's U.S., where immigrants are so cruelly scapegoated and targeted for abuse and repression.

How did the gangs in El Salvador emerge and become so powerful? Where did they come from? They are literally made the in U.S. The two biggest gangs are named after streets in Los Angeles. They were formed in Los Angeles among young Salvadorans whose families fled the Salvadoran civil war and ended up in Los Angeles neighborhoods where gangs were already established. So the newcomer Salvadoran youth formed their own gangs to protect themselves.

Then in the 1990s the Clinton administration and California politicians thought it would help their electoral fortunes if they 'got tough' on crime and immigration. The federal “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996”, the “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994” along with state-level laws like California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 and “Three Strikes” crime bill, filled the jails with Latino and Black youth, and revved up mass deportations of Mexican and Central American immigrants.

Suddenly thousands of Salvadoran youth who grew up in the U.S. were deported to El Salvador, a country they barely knew. Among those sent back were some gang members. This sent Los Angeles gangs to a country devastated by war, with families shattered and split apart, with guns still aplenty, and no jobs or economic opportunity. The gangs spread like wildfire. So the Salvadoran gangs that Donald Trump likes to talk about as part of his racist anti-Latino and anti-immigrant diatribes were created right here in the U.S. and then spread to El Salvador via policies of mass deportation.

El Salvador was hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and then hit by a harsh earthquake that led to landslides that swallowed whole communities in 2001. It was then that the U.S. government under President Bush opened up Temporary Protective Status to Salvadorans without an immigration status in the U.S. so they wouldn't be sent back to a country devastated by a natural disaster on top of political and social disasters.

TPS is a humanitarian status that the president can designate when a country is in a state of turmoil and therefore sending people back there would likely put them in danger. The president regularly reviews countries with TPS status to decide whether to extend their status or not. The president has a lot of leeway to grant TPS and to end it. The fact that TPS has been renewed every 18 months for Salvadorans since 2001 is not officially because of the situation of violence and instability in the country, but that clearly has made it too unpalatable for either former Presidents Bush or Obama to end TPS and send hundreds of thousands of people back there. TPS has continued for Salvadorans for 17 years. But clearly Trump has no such qualms about sending hundreds of thousands of people to the most violent country in the hemisphere with few economic opportunities.

The Salvadoran economy is deeply dependent on the money that Salvadorans in the U.S. send back to their families in El Salvador. Ending TPS and then possibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans will curtail that flow of money via remittances. This will have a huge negative impact on the economy there. According to the World Bank, Salvadorans in the U.S. send $4.5 billion a year to El Salvador, accounting for about 17% of the country’s GDP. What will be the effect of losing a big chunk of that money flow? It can only be assumed that it will drive more people toward illicit economies or toward trying to make the trek to the United States, fueling more waves of forced mass migration.

Another factor worth mentioning is that El Salvador is in its second term of having a leftist president from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a leftist party rooted in the guerilla movement of the 1980s. Before 2009, the oligarchy represented mainly by the ARENA party held a tight grip on all levers of power that had never been broken. The oligarchy still controls the economy, media, judiciary and the largest group in the legislative assembly. They use all those things to try to block any progressive measure the FMLN president tries to implement. And ARENA has been tenaciously fighting to get the presidency back as well as local control in many towns where the mayor and city councils are from the FMLN. Toward that end they wage a constant propaganda war against the FMLN.

In the years before the FMLN first won the presidency in 2009, ARENA always tried to scare people away from voting for the FMLN in every election by saying that if the leftist FMLN was in power then the U.S. government would punish Salvadorans by ending TPS, by cutting off remittances or taking other retribution against Salvadorans. The FMLN has been in the presidency since 2009 and none of that has happened. It was simply propaganda aimed at scaring people into continuing to vote for the oligarchy’s favored party.

But now that Trump is ending TPS, the Salvadoran right wing and the media they control is in a frenzy blaming the FMLN. They are saying this is happening because the FMLN doesn't simply ask “how high?” when the U.S. government says “jump.” This can be a very powerful tool in ARENA's arsenal because the Salvadoran economy overall and many families are dependent on the money Salvadorans in the U.S. send back to their families in El Salvador since there are so few jobs or real economic opportunities.

But it is clear that the end of TPS for Salvadorans has nothing to do with the FMLN being in power. How could it, when Trump also ended TPS for several other countries with very different governments including Haiti, Sudan and Nicaragua? Soon the Trump administration will decide whether to continue TPS for Syria, Nepal, Honduras, Yemen and Somalia. Given Trump’s consistent anti-Muslim, anti-Latino and anti-immigrant politics, it seems very likely he will end TPS for most if not all of those countries too.

The decision to end TPS for Salvadorans is a result of Trump and the part of the U.S. capitalist class he represents acting in what they think is in their economic and political interest. It is not a response to Salvadoran electoral politics. It's important to counter the propaganda from the Salvadoran right wing and their right-wing backers in the U.S. that they're using for electoral purposes. They are wielding this issue to try to damage the FMLN's prospects in El Salvador's legislative elections this year and the presidential election next year. That propaganda can have a real impact in El Salvador's elections.

In the U.S. the immigrant rights movement, labor movement, and all who believe in social justice must continue to fight for justice for Salvadoran immigrants. We must stand with them against Trump's dishonest and racist rhetoric and especially stand with them in fighting deportations and separation of families. The struggle is not over. There are 18 months to fight for a reversal of this decision on TPS or for legislative action to win permanent residency for Salvadorans who are currently on TPS. And we must continue to build the movement’s capacity to fight every deportation they may try to carry out.

While TPS has been very important for Salvadorans in the U.S., the fact is TPS wasn't enough. A large number of Salvadorans never qualified for TPS because there were many restrictions based on when people arrived in the U.S. and other factors. So we must continue to fight for legalization for all.

Legalization for all is the only just solution, given that U.S.-backed wars in Central America and unjust trade agreements with Mexico and Central America are the root cause of the forced mass migration of millions of people.

#MinneapolisMN #ElSalvador #DonaldTrump #TPS #TemporaryProtectedStatus

Minneapolis, MN – On Nov. 10, around 500 students from 17 local high schools and middle schools walked out of their schools and braved cold weather and bitter winds as they took to the streets to demand that Congress take immediate action to protect hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth who will be stripped of their hard fought-for legal status. They converged at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park and marched over two miles to the memorial of Emiliano Zapata, symbolizing the unity of the struggles of Black and Latino students.

During the march, rhythm and energy from local danzantes kept spirits high, as protesters chanted, “Donald Trump, shame on you! Immigrants are humans too!” and “We believe that we will win!” These determined youth, commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” have repeatedly marched without fear for the past decade and forced President Obama’s hand in implementing the program known as DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

President Trump’s announcement two months ago to end DACA was a continuation of the blatantly racist attacks against immigrants since Trump took office. Over 800,000 children and young adults again face the threat of losing the only home they have ever known. Most of them were brought here as infants or small children by parents escaping the dire economic conditions or wars and violence brought about by U.S. imperialism. And once again, these youths are taking to the streets to demand justice.

The Friday, Nov. 10 walkout was organized by the Interracial Student Movement (ISM), a student group formed just three weeks ago. Angelica Bello, one of the main organizers, felt like she needed to take action. “I am affected by the system at hand and I really want to do something about it because I know my future is in jeopardy. We want a clean DREAM Act with no funding for the wall and no taking out sanctuary cities or hiring more ICE agents,” said Bello. Marchers demanded Congress pass a clean DREAM Act and demanded legalization for all, recognizing their parents were the first Dreamers. The students also called for the renewal of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for all status holders.

In its relentless attacks on immigrants, the Trump administration announced Nov. 6 an end to Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Nicaraguans and Sudanese immigrants, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for two decades. This decision will tear apart nearly 6400 more families, and strikes fear in the over 400,000 TPS recipients from countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Liberia and more.

The Nov. 10 student walkout proved that immigrant youth are ready to fight against Trump’s vicious attacks. Students who walked out of their schools were joined by members of community groups and unions, such as the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar, SEIU Local 26, and many more.

#MinneapolisMN #DACA #TPS #InterracialStudentMovement