November 7, 2024
Dominican Republic sending children, pregnant migrants back to Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Impoverished Haiti, beset by spreading gang violence, worsening hunger and now cholera, is hemorrhaging refugees.

Its nearest neighbor is responding by tightening its border and stepping up deportations.

The Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, is building a 13-foot-high fence along nearly half ofthe 250-mile frontier and sending tens of thousands of Haitians back home. They have included hundreds of pregnant women and unaccompanied minors, advocates say, in apparent violation of international conventions and bilateral agreements.

The Dominican Republic, with a population of 11 million, is home to more than 500,000 Haitians. The country, more stable and prosperous than its neighbor, deported more than 170,000 people in 2022, government data shows; most were Haitians. That was more than double the number from the year before.

In January, authorities picked up the pace, removing 23,500 more.

“Never before has any government done so much to protect the integrity of the Dominican Republic along its border,” President Luis Abinader told the country’s National Assembly last month, to applause.

Some migrants and their advocates see an element of racism in the policy. The U.S. State Department has warned American travelers that the crackdown “may lead to increased interaction with Dominican authorities, especially for darker-skinned U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens of African descent.”

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Haitians wait to cross the Dajabón River from Ouanaminthe, Haiti, to Dajabón, Dominican Republic, in November 2021. (Matias Delacroix/AP)

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, among others, has called for the removals to end.

Haitian deportees, including unaccompanied minors, have told The Washington Post of being arrested without explanation and held in overcrowded and unsanitary spaces with little or no food or water before being sent back to a country where they fear for their lives.

Senators’ departure leaves Haiti without an elected government

Manoucheka Saint-Fleur, a 32-year-old office cleaner, fled Haiti in 2020 after five police officers in Port-au-Prince were shot to death. She says she was detained in the Dominican Republic on her way to work one day, jammed into a packed yellow bus and driven to the border. She says authorities beat and Tasered migrants and fired tear gas into the bus.

The Dominican Republic’s Foreign and Immigration ministries did not respond to The Post’s questions about the campaign. But in public comments, Dominican officials have rejected criticism. Given the chaos next door — Abinader has called it a “low-intensity civil war” — the removals are necessary, they say. They deny that they’re abusing migrants. And they chide the international community for failing to ease Haiti’s crises.

When the United Nations urged a halt to the removals, Abinader was defiant: Not only would they continue but they would increase, he said. “Never before,” he boasted last month, has his country “shown so much firmness in our immigration policy, in line with human rights, but without hesitation when it comes to its application.”

Abductions by the busload: Haitians are being held hostage by a surge in kidnappings

Some Dominicans accuse critics of meddling in the country’s internal affairs and, in nativist tones, rail against the “Haitianization” of their country. They say it’s unfair to single out the country that has borne the brunt of the Haitian exodus for criticism when other countries have been similarly unwelcoming.

The Bahamas, another common destination for fleeing Haitians, announced its own crackdown last month. U.S. officials this month defended the U.S. removal of Haitians before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Bridget Wooding, director of the Observatory of Caribbean Migrants, said that “deportations are episodically used in the Dominican Republic for political ends,” but that the current crackdown is notable for the numbers of people being swept up.

It’s disproportionately affecting “older women, pregnant women, postpartum women and children,” she said, even though they’re supposed to be protected from deportation by Dominican legislation, binational agreements and international conventions.

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People line up outside an immigration office in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 17 to apply for passports. (Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters)

The migrant aid group Fondation Zanmi Timoun operates a center in the Haitian border community of Belladère. In the last half of 2022, spokesman Joseph Richard Fortuné says, it received more than 760 deported unaccompanied minors, including several pregnant girls with disabilities.

Most of the children had been detained, he says, sometimes for longer than a week. Some had been separated from their parents. Among the deportees, Fortuné says, was a 16-year-old Black girl who had been stopped on her way to school, despite being a Dominican citizen — evidence, he says, of “a racism component” in the removals.

“We’ve always had deportations,” he said. “But what we’ve seen since July is unprecedented.”

The developments are inflaming long-fraught relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The migration of Creole-speaking Haitians to the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic dates back more than a century. Haitians have long been employed — legally and otherwise — in low-wage jobs many Dominicans are loath to perform, particularly in construction and agriculture.

A Haitian border town struggles with new rules in the Dominican Republic

Haiti is one of the Dominican Republic’s main trading partners, and families and friendships span the border. But the neighboring countries are, in many ways, worlds apart.

The Dominican Republic, a tourist magnet, is one of Latin America’s economic successes.

Haiti, in contrast, has long been the hemisphere’s poorest country, buffeted by a cycle of dictatorship and violent political chaos. Its presidency has been vacant since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, and the National Assembly empty since the last senators’ terms expired in January without new elections.

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A man carries his son as they look for cover from gang violence in Port-au-Prince on March 3. (Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters)

The government, such as it is, is led by Ariel Henry, appointed prime minister by Moïse two days before his death and now linked to a suspect in the still-unsolved plot to kill the president. But considerable power is wielded by the violent armed gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince.

Doctors Without Borders cited “intolerable risks” this month when it suspended operations at a medical facility in the Cité Soleil slum of the capital. “We are looking at a war scene just meters from our hospital,” medical adviser Vincent Harris said.

(opinion)The Dominican Republic, stealing a page from Donald Trump’s playbook, began building its border fence last year.(opinion) The Abinader administration says it should be finished by May 2024 — just in time, as it happens, for general elections.

Dominicans poised to round up Haitian workers as deadline passes

In Haiti, meanwhile, the Support Group for Refugees and Returnees is struggling to cope with the volume of deportees. Rigard Orbé, who heads the office in the border city of Belladère, says it received twice as many deported pregnant women last yearas in 2021.

Josué Azor, a 36-year-old freelance photographer based in Port-au-Prince, flew to the Dominican Republic in December for a work assignment. While out one dayin Las Terrenas, a coastal resort 100 miles from Santo Domingo, he says,he and a colleague were arrested for what they were told were immigration violations.

Azor says he offered repeatedly to show authorities his documents, but they weren’t interested. He was detained with other Haitians for three hours in the blazing Dominican sun, while police splashed some with a “nasty liquid,” before he was released without explanation.

“It was clear that it was something against Haitians,” Azor said. “I guess that my gestures, the language we speak on the street made them see that we were Haitian. … It’s xenophobia.”

Junior Laurent, 22, was born to Haitian parents in the Dominican Republic, where he grew up and still lives. Anti-Haitian discrimination has grown so severe, he says, that his family now rarely ventures out.

He made an exception in January to buy juice near his home. Authorities detained him without asking any questions. Two days later, he was deported to Haiti.

“If you are Black, they will arrest you,” he said. “It’s humiliating what they did to me.”

The U.N. is mulling another mission to Haiti. Haitians are skeptical.

Emmanuel Blaise, a house painter, was arrested on his way home from work in January. In detention, he says, authorities beat him. He says the officers who arrested him said they could prevent his removal — for 15,000 Dominican pesos.

That was more than he could afford. He was deported.

“I paid to get in,” Blaise said. “The same officers who help you get in are the same ones who will arrest you and bring you back.”

Ana Vanessa Herrero contributed to this report.

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Widlore Mérancourt is a Haitian reporter and editor-in-chief of AyiboPost, a renowned online news organization. He has covered major news events in Haiti for The Washington Post, including the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

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Amanda Coletta is a Toronto-based correspondent who covers Canada and the Caribbean for The Washington Post. She previously worked in London, first at the Economist and then the Wall Street Journal.

COMMENTS
The Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, is building a 13-foot-high fence along nearly half of the 250-mile frontier.
I applaud the Dominican Republic for taking control of its border and ensuring that non-citizens respect its territorial integrity. Perhaps the U.S. can humbly learn something from the Dominican Republic?
They need to fix their country. DR is doing the best thing.

Wow.
They have more backbone than we do.

Apparently, you don’t have enough sense to recognize the hypocrisy in your statement.

The only people treated well by the DR’s government and politicians are professional baseball players exported to the MLB here in the U.S. Everyone else is expendable.

(Edited)
France and the US should help Haiti by aiding in its decolonization, ie. paying for the repatriation of the former African slaves to their ancestral homelands.

Well, a few problems here. First, what if the “ancestral homelands” don’t want them, or they can’t afford to house and feed them? Secondly, there’s many many generations flowing from the former African slaves. They would have no ties in African states, and would likely be treated as outsiders and interlopers. Look to the situation in Israel as to how well that worked. Thirdly, the “ancestral homelands” would see this as us dumping a problem on them instead of dealing with it ourselves and within our neighbourhood. There is no easy solution to the problem in Haiti. No one really wants to touch it. It’s up to the people of Haiti to solve.

Aside from the obvious practical problems, there is the idiocy of the notion.

Well, it’s about high time that Britain does the same. It can start with their indentured servants and work their way forward.

This kind of biased nonsensical reporting must stop. DR already has 11 million citizens and half million “migrants”. That county cannot possibly accommodate millions of people more on a small island of that size. When did it become acceptable that people from one country can just move to any other country whenever they want? There is indeed a global refugee crisis but the solution lies in helping those countries to solve their most pressing problems.

Correct .
And the Most Pressing problem is their “fertility rates” — AKA unsustainable , ruinous and backwards levels of Overpopulation .
Until Haiti and other failed states control Overpopulation , they will sink further and further down .

Complete destruction of their half of the island .

I guess it became acceptable when Europeans ventured into the “new world.”

They are being both selective and protective. Not so the US.

I’ve read in several places that Dominicans are mainly mixed race or black. I have no doubt there is anti-Haitian bias, but is it racism? That is less clear.

Ño. It’s the oldest known motivation in the world – desiring self-preservation.

Yes, it’s racism, and to be more specific, anti-Black racism. It’s the result of centuries of indoctrination with the myth of white supremacy and aided and abetted by poor education and an ignorance of history; it is a residual of French and Spanish colonialism and their institutionalized slavery.

DR has used Haitians for hard labor, menial jobs ( reaping sugar cane) for many yrs. Aside from outright racism by DR folks, these jobs afford only sub-human salaries.

Having spent time in both in past, neither country is functioning. Both are failed in so many ways, let them all mingle, believe me the DR is not aspirational. Sad but true

And yet, the article said DR was one of the Latin American success stories. I don’y think any failure in DR is in any way comparable to Haiti, which is a total nightmare.

Did Big Papi get shot in the DR?

There are daily migrant boats going from DR to PR, recently I was reading of a boat that capsized killing everyone from a small town in DR near the PR beaches.

Good for DR! Send them all back, or the Dominican Republic will soon be just like Haiti. These people all share the same island. One country seems to figure out how to make government work, and how to work themselves, and the other (Haiti) is a long term shamble that nothing but hard work can fix. Call it cultural, or whatever. And yes, the US needs to send Haitian refugees back to Haiti. Let them be part of their own solution…………..

The US should be doing what the Dominicans are doing. We need to protect the resources and opportunities of our country for citizens and legal immigrants. Those that advocate for open borders and amnesty are the useful idiots of the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch Network.

So I guess you don’t know the difference between legal and illegal? The US regularly deports illegal entrants. Asylum seekers are not illegal entrants and there is no “open border!”

Fig leaf of asylum when 99% don’t qualify and know they dont qualify for asylum.
Bull. DR deported twice the number of illegal entries as Biden in one year.

(Edited)
Most asylum seekers are making fraudulent claims. Imagine if you made a fraudulent claim to the Federal government.

I hate to break it to you, but undocumented immigration is a feature, not a bug, of the US economy. It’s never going away because, despite what the politicians may tell you, they know our economy would crash without some level of undocumented workers willing to work for low wages, especially in agriculture, construction, and the service economy.

Sure. We have 15 million here now. Reagan made 5 million citizens and as soon as they got status they moved to higher paying jobs.
Document the illegal entries. Tax them. Send them back in 5 years to build their own countries. No illegals should be here a lifetime.
I just don’t think it’s ever going to happen. The capitalist incentives to maintain the status quo are too strong. There’s also the matter of our birthrate falling below the replacement rate, which spells bad news for the economy and society.
I’m not saying undocumented immigration is ideal, it’s that there is no political will to do anything substantive about it. I think much of the immigration debate on both sides is political theater.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/16/haiti-dominican-republic-migrant-crackdown/