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News > Latin America

Dominican Officials Arrest, Set to Deport 555 Haitians

  • Haitian children stand on a ridge alongside the road that divides Hispaniola island into the Dominican Republic and Haiti to the west.

    Haitian children stand on a ridge alongside the road that divides Hispaniola island into the Dominican Republic and Haiti to the west. | Photo: Reuters

Published 6 December 2017
Opinion

They were transferred to the border where they will be registered and deported across the border to Haiti.

The Dominican office of migration has arrested 555 undocumented Haitians throughout the northern province of Puerto Plata. They were transferred to the border post at Dajabon where they will be registered and deported across the border to Haiti.

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Haiti Libre newspaper reported that these arrests diverge from typical General Directorate of Migration practices that usually depended on random roadside checks to discover undocumented persons.

The arrests were part of an eight-hour orchestrated raid on various communities and homes within Puerto Plata. The operation was carried out by DGM agents, along with army and air force personnel and the Dominican Republic’s Attorney General's Office, using government intelligence to locate and capture the Haitians.

DGM’s Director General Lieutenant General Maximo Muñoz Delgado confirmed these types of intelligence-based, “surprise” arrests and deportations will continue. The Dominican Republic has carried out a rash of arrests of undocumented, mainly Haitian immigrants over the past couple of weeks in the cities and towns of Espaillat, La Altagracia, Santiago and Santo Domingo.

The Dominican government is continuing to militarize its border sending additional soldiers to its 400 km shared border with Haiti in order to stop Haitians from entering the country.

In October alone, Dominican migration deported or refused to allow entry to 10,945 foreigners, mainly Haitians, because of “irregular” paperwork. Between June 2015 and October 2017, nearly 245,000 Haitians self-deported or were deported by officials from the Dominican Republic.

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