Protesters hold signs as they march in opposition to the election of President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in St. Louis. AP Photo/Jeff Roberson. All rights reserved.
The blueprint established under the Obama administration to deport Central American teenagers soon after they reach the age of majority continues to operate unabated. Despite the intercession of public officials and a pending appeal in Federal Immigration Court, North Carolina teenager Pedro Arturo Salmerón was deported from the United States to El Salvador on Saturday, November 12, just days after Donald Trump was elected president.
The deportation marks the continuation of a policy begun last year under the Obama government to respond to an unprecedented number of minors and mothers with small children who arrived at the U.S./Mexican border from the northern Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras during the summer of 2014. In the wake of an escalation in violence that rendered those countries the most dangerous places on earth and set off the mass migration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a directive in December 2015 taking aim at the young and vulnerable asylum seekers as soon as they aged out of protected status.
