SAN ANTONIO – After a friend called her Monday to break the news, Raquel Martinez said she cried all morning.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated the temporary legal status given to at least 200,000 Salvadorans since a series of devastating earthquakes in 2001.
Martinez said she was afraid this day would come. Now, she's in fear of what awaits her if she returns to the country she left when she was 18.
"Then it'll be like being led to the slaughter," she said.
The conditions that caused temporary protected status to be extended through the years still exists, Martinez said.
Brutal gangs, widespread violence and crime are why the small Central American country of El Salvador was considered the murder capital of the world in 2016, when Martinez's friend, Maria Hernandez, who is now asking for asylum, fled with her 6-year-old daughter.
Hernandez said even educated people in El Salvador are unemployed or do menial work as a necessity. She said she wanted to spare her daughter, Genesis, the same fate.
"She's in kindergarten, but they tell me she's the smartest girl in the class. After being tested, they said she belonged in the third grade," Hernandez said.
Hernandez said what's happening to her friend is unfair.
Martinez said she has earned a living packing fruits and vegetables at a packing shed for the past 12 years. Single without children, Martinez also said she doesn't have family anymore in El Salvador, so she's fearful of what could await her.
"I've paid my taxes. I have good credit. I have no criminal record," she said. "I deserve an opportunity."
Martinez said she and many others who have jobs, businesses, homes and families here could lose it all.
Jonathan Castillo, a Salvadoran, and now a U.S. citizen who owns a landscape company, said he worries about families being divided if their children were born in the U.S.
"From my point of view, that's wrong," he said.
Salvadorans such as Martinez have until Sept. 9, 2019, to get their legal status.
Even though this isn't her country, Martinez said, "This is the country I love."