Statement in Support of District of Columbia Resolutions PR22-448 ...

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Nov 2, 2017 - in the balance, but this is also true to an extent of some other Latin American countries including Mexico
Statement in Support of District of Columbia Resolutions PR22-448 and PR22-525 Regarding DACA and Temporary Protected Status Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director, Latin America Working Group November 2, 2017

Thank you to Chairman Mendelson and to the District of Columbia’s City Council members for introducing these two important resolutions regarding Temporary Protected Status and DACA for our neighbors and friends who are contributing so much to our communities. I direct a nonprofit organization in DC, Latin America Working Group, which promotes human rights in Latin America and in U.S. policy towards the Latin American region. I’d like to talk about what faces many people who have TPS or DACA protections if they are deported back to their homelands. I will describe the cases of El Salvador and Honduras, whose TPS status hangs in the balance, but this is also true to an extent of some other Latin American countries including Mexico and Guatemala. Honduras and El Salvador remain two of the most dangerous countries on earth not at war. El Salvador led the world in homicides per capita in 2015 and 2016, wresting this infamous title from Honduras which held it the previous year. The Honduran cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, to which Hondurans losing TPS or DACA status would be deported, remain among the most dangerous in the world. In El Salvador and Honduras today, many people’s lives are affected every day by the brutal impact of gang control of neighborhoods. Teenagers and children are forcibly recruited by gangs. Gangs levy extortion taxes that affect everyone from tortilla sellers to taxi drivers to restaurant owners; people are threatened or killed for being unable to pay. Young women and girls are affected by sexual violence, forced to be sexual partners of gang members or brutalized to put pressure on their parents to pay extortion taxes or their brother to join a gang. Youth are killed in gang warfare and by state security forces. Many Salvadorans and Hondurans have to leave their homes due to violence, are internally displaced with their country, and then may have to flee their homelands. In tiny El Salvador especially, there is nowhere to hide from the gangs. In Honduras, a high level of corruption, penetration of local and national government by organized crime, and a government that increasingly does not tolerate the rights of people to free association makes the situation far worse. In both countries, police commit serious abuses including extrajudicial executions, and teenage boys and young men in particular in poor

neighborhoods, even when they are not involved in gangs, may be targeted by police. In both countries, high levels of impunity offers little hope for justice. It is hard to get good statistics on how many internally displaced people there are in each country, but one limited survey in Honduras estimates 174,000 people and in El Salvador, one estimate is 324,000 internally displaced. Internal displacement is often a stop on the way to leaving the country for good. This refugee crisis, because that is what it is, a refugee crisis and not only an immigration flow, is still continuing. Children, teenagers, men, and women are still fleeing El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and other countries of the region due to violence. And most of those Central Americans who arrived to the United States in more recent years, whether children or adults, have no protections, including TPS and DACA. What happens when people are deported from the United States to El Salvador or Honduras? There is almost nothing in the way of programs to reintegrate adults, children, or teenagers back into jobs, schools, and life in what for many of them may feel like a new and foreign country. They will be competing with those who never left for scarce jobs and services. They will be targets for extortion, as they may be seen as still having some resources in the United States. But of course many people will not be deported but will go underground in the United States. Either way, this will diminish the vital support that Hondurans and Salvadorans in the United States, now with jobs, well-rooted lives, houses, and businesses in the United States, have generously been providing through remittances and other support to their families and communities in Honduras and El Salvador. All this will make it harder for the countries of El Salvador and Honduras to reduce the violence and poverty they face and will simply recycle the problems of violence and lack of opportunity leading to migration. Therefore both because of the impact that withdrawing TPS and DACA will have on our friends and neighbors here in DC and surrounding areas, and because of the impact that withdrawing TPS and DACA would have on their countries of origin like El Salvador and Honduras, I thank you for introducing these resolutions and urge their approval.