SANTO DOMINGO – The Dominican Republic said Tuesday it has deported or repatriated nearly 11,000 Haitians in the past week, fulfilling a pledge to do so weekly as neighboring Haiti scrambles to handle the influx while besieged by gang violence and poverty.
The Dominican government announced last week that it would deport up to 10,000 Haitians a week, citing an “excess” of immigrants as relations between the countries that share the island of Hispaniola continue to sour. These are the largest such deportations in recent history there.
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The announcement prompted Haitian officials to request an emergency meeting at the Organization of American States, where Haitian permanent representative Gandy Thomas called the deportations “a strategy of ethnic cleansing” and “a discriminatory campaign against Haitians due to their nationality and color of their skin.”
Thomas called for dialogue and a “respectful solution,” saying the deportations will “worsen the fragility of our infrastructure while the deportees will arrive with no support, no resources and no ties to their community.”
At least half a million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, according to human rights groups.
Activists say the deportations put the lives of thousands at risk. A U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police that began earlier this year to try to quell gang violence is facing a lack of funds and personnel.
“There are a great number of armed groups that are just like birds of prey waiting to swoop down and take advantage of these people,” said Sam Guillaume with Haiti’s Support Group for Returnees and Refugees.
Guillaume accused Dominican authorities of “hunting down” Haitians, asserting that some are extorted, raped or held in jail with no water or food and subjected to beatings or tear gas “if they dare say boo.”
Radhafil Rodríguez, adviser to the OAS' Dominican Republic mission, said the government rejected accusations of mistreatment and would take any complaint “very seriously” and investigate it.
He said Haiti's crisis is disproportionately affecting the Dominican Republic, asserting that migrants are overwhelming schools, clinics and hospitals.
Rodríguez said his country stands in solidarity with the people of Haiti during their crisis but added that no one can expect it to halt deportations.
Both Rodríguez and Thomas called for dialogue as officials in Haiti urgently met to talk about the deportations and established a working group to handle the influx of migrants and their needs.
“The forced and mass deportation of our Haitian compatriots from the Dominican Republic is a violation of the fundamental principles of human dignity,” Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday.
The mass deportations have led to an increase in abandoned children across the Dominican Republic, warned activist William Charpentier, coordinator for the Dominican-based National Coalition for Migrations and Refugees.
“They take their parents, or one of the parents, and leave the children behind, even while they’re in school,” he said.
Charpentier called the deportations “a type of persecution against Black people, against everything they presume to be Haitian.”
He said even people with legal documents are being detained and deported, a practice that activists say has occurred in previous years.
Allegations of extortion have surged.
Ocicle Batista, a 45-year-old Haitian migrant who sells avocados in the capital, Santo Domingo, accused soldiers of demanding $230 to $330 to avoid deportations “even when they have their papers in hand,” she said of migrants.
“We come here to work,” she said.
Luis Rafael Lee Ballester, the Dominican Republic’s migration director, said human rights are being respected and that a proportional use of force is used when migrants are arrested.
He said those with documents were detained because they did not have “reliable identification” to justify their presence in the country.
From Oct. 1-7, 7,591 people were deported and 3,323 repatriated, according to the government, which said all were Haitian.
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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.