As temporary protected status settlement talks stall, more than 250,000 risk deportation for trying to enter the United States
This article is more than 3 years old
This article is more than 3 years old
Cummings County, Georgia, sits as the United States’ southernmost county in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Like the majority of the country, it has struggled with the economic impact of the Great Recession, compounded by the impact of a population surge known as “The Great Migration”.
In 2010, the county voted to approve the settlement of the largest class of immigrants in the nation’s history – some 11,000 Salvadoran “Dreamers” brought here as children as a result of the government’s illegal immigration policies.
Today, many of the young people who settled here in the 1970s and 1980s are no longer US citizens, while the number of Salvadorans in the county, including the Dreamers, remains at around 2,000.
“We are the southernmost county in America, so it is an honor to be the southernmost county in America,” says county commissioner Karen McCall, who has been working on immigration settlement talks since the beginning of the last year.
“We can use this opportunity to provide a second chance for those who came here as children,” she adds. “If the administration wants to make sure that these individuals can come to the US and be safe and secure, we will work with them. We will work with them.”
It is an immigration settlement that has already been rejected twice, most recently in a February 13 deal that would have granted DACA recipients up to three years of temporary protected status.
As a result of the latest talks, a delegation of county officials met with White House adviser Jared Kushner to discuss the future of DACA recipients. The delegation believes that the Trump administration may be open to reaching an agreement, “but these talks are going nowhere,” says commissioner McCall.
“We would like to go to the end of the year, where we would have a final decision.”
A federal judge has ordered the current DACA negotiations to continue until at least 30 December.
‘He’s an immigrant without a homeland’
