How Far Will the Dominican Republic Go in Deporting Haitians?

More than a year has passed since Dominican President Luis Abinader announced a plan to deport a quota of 10,000 undocumented Haitians per week, provoking sharp criticism from human rights organizations, including Amnesty International. For Haitians fleeing their country, where gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people in 2025, life in the neighboring Dominican Republic has become defined by constant fear. “The past year has been terrible for our community,” Edwin Paraison, former minister for Haitians abroad and founder of the Foundation Zile, which specializes in Haitian-Dominican relations, said in an interview. 

With daily raids carried out by agents of the General Directorate of Migration in the streets, workplaces, churches, and even inside homes, many have been pushed into living clandestinely. “Some of our compatriots leave for work as early as three or four in the morning, only to spend hours waiting for the day to begin,” Paraison added.

Human rights organizations criticize this immigration policy, saying it relies on racial profiling and arbitrary detention. The policy disproportionately targets individuals assumed to be Haitian because of their skin color, regardless of their legal status, and also affects Black Dominicans.

Tiboss,* 25, a barber, and Maya,* 37, a housekeeper, who both requested to be identified by a pseudonym to protect their identities, are among the Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. Although they have never met, their experiences reflect the same political reality between these neighboring countries that share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. 

Both moved to the Dominican Republic from Port-au-Prince after the COVID-19 pandemic, hoping for a better life. Despite repeated attempts to regularize their status, their efforts were affected by the rising diplomatic tensions between the two countries. In 2023, Haiti resumed construction of a canal that derives from the Massacre River, which starts on the Dominican side of the border. The tension over water resources led to the closure of the border and the suspension of visa procedures.

Both were arrested by immigration agents while riding public buses, known as guaguas — Maya in 2024 and Tiboss in 2025 — and taken to Haina, the largest detention center for Haitians awaiting deportation, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) southwest of Santo Domingo. Inside, they found that even their basic needs were not met. “They gave us something worse than dog food”, and no water, “unless you paid a guard,” said Maya, who spent a day and a night at Haina, leaving her 6-year-old daughter in the care of her cousin. Detained in the morning in a nearly empty room, she recalled that by early evening, there were so many people that she “could barely stand.”

Tiboss was held for four days after suffering physical abuse at the time of his arrest. “They grabbed me by the back of the neck,” he said. Because of the tattoos on his arms, he was accused of belonging to a Haitian gang. His family had to “pay 50,000 pesos” ($817) for the charges to be dropped.

The General Directorate of Migration officially stated that these operations were “carried out with strict respect for the fundamental rights of the individuals involved, ensuring dignified treatment, adequate safety and hygiene conditions, and the guarantee of due process, in accordance with national and international human rights regulations.”

“The human rights abuses that Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent face in the Dominican Republic are arguably the most severe that migrants face in the hemisphere.”

Global Justice Clinic at New York University. 

As migration trucks reach the Haitian side of the border, smugglers move in, taking advantage of deportees by charging exorbitant fees to bring them back into the Dominican Republic. Some officials within the Dominican authorities are also implicated, extorting significant bribes. “I was brought back inside a police officer’s personal vehicle,” said Tiboss. President Abinader has acknowledged this corrupt system that extracts money from Haitians in exchange for a short reprieve, only for them to face deportation again, in a never-ending cycle.

As deportations increased, local and international organizations reported several cases involving Dominicans of Haitian descent. One of them is Wilson,* 25, a motorcycle taxi driver, also using a pseudonym for protection, who was arrested last year in his neighborhood northwest of Santo Domingo. Born and raised in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, the young man had never crossed the border before his expulsion. “I only knew Haiti through social media,” he said in an interview.

His case is rooted in the 2010 adoption of a new Constitution by the Dominican Republic, which abolished birthright citizenship for children born to parents residing illegally in the country. Three years later, a ruling by the Constitutional Court retroactively applied this decision to all individuals born after 1929, leaving more than 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless and de facto subject to deportation.

Thanks to a relative, Wilson was able to receive assistance during his month-long stay in Haiti. According to Paraison, this is not the case for everyone: “Sometimes third or fourth-generation Haitians are deported even though they have no connection to Haiti.” Stateless, and sometimes not even speaking Creole, these individuals are stuck between two countries. “The Haitian authorities won’t take them in either because, in a sense, they don’t belong to them, even if they have Haitian roots,” explained human rights activist Bill Perly Duysse. He works with The Socio-Cultural Movement of Haitian Workers (MOSCTHA), a local NGO that runs two clinics in Santo Domingo and Navarrete, as well as several mobile clinics providing assistance to Haitians across the country. 

The Dominican Republic did not wait for Trump’s return to the White House to carry out mass expulsions of Haitians. But his re-election in November 2024 gave the government the backing to continue, as illustrated by Marco Rubio’s visit to Santo Domingo in February 2025.

According to the latest official survey, approximately 500,000 Haitians were living in the Dominican Republic, playing a crucial role in the economy, where they work mainly in construction, agriculture, domestic services, and tourism.

The Trump administration also impacted Haitians’ lives by making sharp cuts to USAID, PEPFAR, and other programs, which significantly reduced the budgets of humanitarian organizations on the ground. “Receiving less donations means providing fewer services,” deplored Dr. Joseph Chérubin, director of MOSCTHA. This poses a danger to public health, especially since undocumented Haitians now face deportation in 33 public hospitals across the country. 

“Women and girls have been hardest hit,” said Liliana Dolis, coordinator of the Movement of Dominican and Haitian Women (MUDHA). The tragic case of Haitian migrant Lourdia Jean Pierre, who died while giving birth at home in May 2025 because she was afraid to go to the hospital, is just one example.

“The human rights abuses that Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent face in the Dominican Republic are arguably the most severe that migrants face in the hemisphere,” according to the human rights organization Global Justice Clinic at New York University. 

“If it were just for me, maybe I would have returned to Haiti,” Maya confided. “But I have a daughter and I care about her future. Now I live for her.”