Guest Post by Bridget Wooding (OBMICA)
On 2 October, the Dominican Republic’s Migration Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior and Police announced an upscaled operation “to deport 10,000 Haitians each week.” This decision had been taken by the Defence and National Security Council, headed up by President Luis Abinader. According to the Council’s directive, the stated objective is to “reduce the perceived excess of migrant population in Dominican communities and will be carried out with strict protocols to ensure the respect of human rights and the dignity of the repatriates.”
The Dominican Republic’s new wave of mass deportations—which follows a series of others in recent years (see the Global Detention Project’s last update in December 2023)—is being carried out indiscriminately, in violation of people’s rights and dignity and in the face of an ongoing humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Haiti. However, the causes of undocumented migration are not being addressed; instead, hate speech and xenophobic practices are being fostered that perpetuate historical narratives of racism and anti-Haitianism. By contrast, research on the subject indicates that it is necessary to dismantle the corrupt system that sustains human trafficking and regularise migration to the Dominican Republic in compliance with both Dominican and international law.