Donald Trump gives 200,000 El Salvadorians in US 18 months to go home or face deportation
Immigrants from El Salvador were allowed to live and work in the US after earthquakes struck the country in 2001
Donald Trump's administration will force nearly 200,000 immigrants from El Salvador to leave the US or be deported.
Immigrants were allowed to live and work legally in America after a pair of devastating earthquakes hit the central American country in 2001 as part of a humanitarian program called Temporary Protected Status.
However President Trump's administration is now ending the special protection, giving them 18 months to leave.
The Department of Homeland Security put an alert message up on its website on Monday announcing the plan, it said: "On Jan. 8, 2018, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Neilsen announced her decision to terminate the Temporary Protected Status designation for El Salvador with a delayed effective date of 18 months to allow for an orderly transition before the designation terminates on Sept. 9, 2019."
Salvadorans were by far the largest group of foreigners benefiting from the program which shielded them from deportation if they entered the US illegally.
The decision comes just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians - the second largest group - lost protections granted to them after Haiti's 2010 earthquake.
Immigrant advocates and the El Salvador government has pleaded with the US to extend it - which it has several times since 2001 - because conditions in the country are still dire.
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told the New York Times the decision was made because the bad conditions from the destruction from the earthquakes "no longer exist".
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The Trump administration has been committed to a crackdown on immigration and last year ended protections for 800,000 young undocumented immigrants known as "Dreamers" because they entered the US as children.
Previous president Obama had passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals law, known as "DACA", allowing young immigrants to apply for a renewable two year visa to work legally in the US and save them from deportation.
They will now be deported from March unless Congress grants them legal status before then.