The Dominican Republic’s expulsion of thousands of Haitians shows the brutality of mass deportations
- Written by Masaya Llavaneras Blanco, Assistant Professor of Development Studies, Huron University College, Western University
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened mass deportations of undocumented migrants once his second term begins.
As he prepares to fulfil his campaign promise, it’s important to understand how these types of mass deportations are carried out. The Dominican Republic (DR) offers a cautionary tale.
Since the beginning of October 2024, Dominican President Luis Abinader Corona has committed to deporting 10,000 Haitians a week. The Organization of International Migration registered 27,000 Haitians had been deported from the DR by the end of October, reaching 40,000 by Nov. 18.
Haitians represent the largest migrant community in the DR because Haiti and the DR share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
According to the latest Dominican National Survey of Immigration conducted in 2017, 497,825 Haitian migrants live in the DR, representing 4.9 per cent of the total population. Assuming that these numbers haven’t changed drastically, 40,000 deportations amount to a significant proportion of the Haitian population in the DR.
The deportations
During my research visit of July 2024, it was clear that the Dominican army, police and migration officers had been given deportation targets long before the president’s October announcement.
I spoke to people who said migration raids became more violent and arbitrary when the deadline approached and targets had not been met.
In border areas, I was told about deported Haitians who were extorted by army officers and others they had paid to be smuggled back into the DR, only to be deported once again. In addition to extortion, migrants were also subjected to violence in their attempts to return to the DR.
The pressure to meet the president’s targets is propelling the current wave of deportations without regard to either domestic or international law.
According to Dominican law, children, pregnant and lactating migrant women should not be deported. However, civil society organizations report that there have been migration raids in maternity wards, particularly in 2021 but also during the last months of 2024.
Lactating mothers, schoolchildren
Despite the fact Dominican law prioritizes the rights of children to family reunification, my research interview subjects told me lactating women have been forcefully separated from their infants. They also told me of cases in which “Haitian-looking children” — in other words, Black — were loaded onto deportation trucks on their way home from school.
Racial profiling, in fact, is a key aspect of deportations in the DR. Black people are targeted and their identity documents disregarded.
For example, in my research visit to the northern Dominican border crossing in 2022, I met a young Dominican-Haitian teen apprehended by police in the middle of the night. The boy had no time to collect his documents as he was forced into a migration truck.
He was held under harsh conditions at the border, far from his hometown, while his mother looked for transport options to bring his documents to authorities to prove he was in fact Dominican.
The boy was lucky he had documents at all. Historically, access to documents among Haitians, Dominicans and specifically Dominicans of Haitian descent has been chronically lacking. The situation has worsened since 2013, when up to 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent were denationalized, making them subject of deportation back to a country where many of them had never been.
Why do Haitians migrate to the DR?
Haitian labour migration has been a significant feature of the Dominican Republic’s development since the beginning of the 20th century.
During a period of occupation and heightened influence over both sides of Hispaniola, the United States promoted the cultivation of sugar in the DR while implementing a racially segregated migration system. The migration model sought to attract European immigrants and dissuade Black and Asian people from coming to the island.
Read more: Haiti has suffered hugely over centuries but its revolution was stunningly innovative
The only viable option for the majority of Haitians to immigrate to the DR was through a labour migration scheme geared toward Haitian men working on sugar plantations under profoundly exploitative conditions.
Even though sugar is no longer the main economic sector of the Dominican economy, the country remains an important destination for Haitians, especially since it’s the only one they can reach by land.
The DR and Haiti are important trading partners with a high volume of goods moving across the border. There are also longstanding cross-border social and cultural practices that shape the culture of both sides of the island.
The DR is also a key destination for Haitians fleeing political violence and the effects of natural disasters. In particular, the 2010 earthquake displaced an estimated 2.3 million people, generating unprecedented numbers of internal and international displacement. Haiti has still not fully recovered from the disaster.
A deep governance crisis resulted from the intervention of an array of international entities that managed up to US$2.4 billion between 2010 and 2012 without significant participation of the Haitian government. More recent natural disasters affecting Haiti include a hurricane in 2016 that displaced another 175,000 people and another earthquake in 2021.
Modern-day Haiti
Today, Haiti finds itself in the middle of a formidable political crisis. Following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021, the country’s public institutions became severely weakened.
Most have fallen into the hands of informal armed groups, especially in the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. These gangs terrorize the population. Mobility within the country is restricted due to the violence and sky-high fuel prices, which makes transportation inaccessible.
Access to clean water, sanitation, electricity and nutrition remains a challenge to the wide majority of the population. Everyday life is subject to gun and sexual violence, in widespread gang-controlled areas.
According to a recent news release put out by the Haitian Support Group for Repatriates and Refugees, 1,200 people died due to gang violence between July and September of 2024. The organization specifically referred to a massacre on Dec. 10 — the International Day of Human Rights — that left 180 civilians dead, many of them elderly, in Wharf Jérémie, a neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince.
This makes the ongoing wave of deportations in the DR particularly reprehensible since deportees are being forced to return to an environment of extreme violence.
The DR is not the only country forcing Haitians to return to these conditions. According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency statistics, the deportation of Haitians without criminal records has doubled between 2021 and 2024, and increased tenfold in 2022.
Haitians face significant challenges in accessing international protection throughout the Americas, starting with their next-door neighbour.
Read more: Haiti's gangs turn to starving children to bolster their ranks
The scene in the U.S.
As Trump prepares to make good on his promise of mass deportations, it’s important to pay attention to what’s happening in the Caribbean.
Haitians took centre stage in the migration debate during the presidential election campaign when Trump disseminated false claims about migrant criminality in Springfield, Ohio, resulting in threats of violence against the Haitian community there.
We are witnessing the global community turn its back on Haitians as they navigate the country’s worst political crisis in decades. They are being forced to return to a country where their lives are at risk. Will the same fate await the migrants victimized by Trump’s mass deportations?
Authors: Masaya Llavaneras Blanco, Assistant Professor of Development Studies, Huron University College, Western University
