Cage-like trucks fitted with iron bars that appear designed to carry livestock line up every morning at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The vehicles at the Elias Pi帽a border crossing are not loaded with cattle, but with Haitians being deported by Dominican immigration authorities. They include young men, pregnant women, unaccompanied children and some people who have never lived in Haiti.
Since October, more than 55,000 people have been deported to Haiti.
Rose-Mieline Florvil, 24, who lived in the Dominican Republic for less than a year, said immigration agents recently raided her house in Santiago, in the northern part of the country, one day before dawn and said something along the lines of 鈥淏lack woman, come here.鈥�
鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 run, because I鈥檓 pregnant,鈥� she said.
The extraordinary wave of deportations 鈥� Dominican officials say the goal is 10,000 per week 鈥� reflects a stringent new immigration policy by a country with a complicated and racially charged history with Haiti.
The two nations share the island of Hispaniola, and the Dominican Republic, the far more prosperous of the two, has sounded increasingly loud alarms about shouldering the burden of what experts say is a failing state next door.
Dire problems in Haiti 鈥� surging gang violence, a health infrastructure in ruins and a government with no elected leaders and unable to reverse the country鈥檚 slide 鈥� have set off an exodus of people seeking security and livelihoods.
As a result, Haitian migrants are using an increasing share of Dominican government services, including public health, officials say.
Dominican authorities say they have had enough.
鈥淭he general feeling of the Dominican population is that we are providing social services greater than what the Dominican Republic is responsible for,鈥� Foreign Minister Roberto 脕lvarez said in an interview, 鈥渁nd that the international community has left us alone to attend to Haitian needs.鈥�
Since Haiti鈥檚 last president was assassinated more than three years ago, the country has been convulsed by gang violence that has left more than 12,000 people dead and forced nearly 800,000 from their homes.
Dominican officials say their country should not serve as an escape valve for a crisis the world has largely ignored. Riding a wave of nationalism, Dominican President Luis Abinader announced the stricter immigration policy in October.
Abinader said he had warned the United Nations that if the situation in Haiti did not improve, the Dominican Republic would take 鈥渟pecial measures.鈥�
In addition to the mass roundups, he said he would beef up controls on the border and deploy specialized units to crack down on the growing numbers of migrants and human traffickers, while respecting human rights.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 have to offer explanations to respect our immigration laws,鈥� the president said.
But human rights organizations say the removals have been plagued with abuses and a lack of due process.
Eduardo Moxteya Pie, 29, who was born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, said he had a police report showing that he had reported his national ID card, which proved Dominican citizenship, as lost.
Without the card, he was detained last month as he left his agricultural job and was taken to Haiti, where he lives in a shelter.
One 11-year-old boy at a migrant shelter in Haiti said he was caught during an early morning immigration raid on the house where he had been staying in a town near the border.
A 17-year-old said he had been shot in the leg by a Dominican immigration officer during a raid of his home.
While Dominican authorities have a right to control their border, human rights activists and deportees say immigration agents are sweeping Black people off the streets, regardless of their residency status.
Migrants have arrived in Haiti injured from beatings, and many others reported having been verbally harassed, said Laura d鈥橢lsa, the protection coordinator for the United Nations鈥� International Organization for Migration, which helps run shelters along the border.
鈥淲hy are all these massive abuses taking place?鈥� she asked. 鈥淚t is extremely shocking to see, and the most extreme I have ever seen.鈥�
Asked about accusations of mistreatment, the Dominican Republic鈥檚 Interior Ministry, which oversees immigration, requested questions in writing and then did not respond to them.
脕lvarez said that of the babies delivered in public hospitals, the share born to Haitian mothers had increased to 40% in October from nearly 24% in 2019.
SA国际传谋 147,000 Haitian children are enrolled in school in the Dominican Republic, costing about $430 million a year, he said.
The country resents claims by critics that its immigration policy is 鈥渞acist and xenophobic,鈥� 脕lvarez said. 鈥淎ll the countries do it, and none are accused of that.鈥�
The two countries鈥� history is long and complex. After Haiti鈥檚 slaves revolted and formed their own independent Black nation in 1804, they led the entire island for 22 years. The Dominican Republic鈥檚 Independence Day marks its rupture not from Spain, the country that colonized it for nearly three centuries, but from Haiti.
Dominican leaders have historically promoted anti-Haitian sentiment. In 1937, Dominican troops, acting on orders of dictator Rafael Trujillo, massacred thousands of Haitians.
Haiti鈥檚 foreign minister noted that the Dominican president chose to unveil the mass deportation plan on Oct. 2, the 87th anniversary of the massacre.
In 2010, the Dominican Republic changed its constitution to eliminate the right to birthright citizenship for children of immigrants in the country without legal permission. Three years later, the country鈥檚 constitutional court ruled that the measure could be implemented retroactively 鈥� rendering stateless tens of thousands of people born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents.
鈥淏y racial profiling, they can be picked up and can be expelled from their own country of birth,鈥� said Bridget Wooding, an immigration expert at a migration studies institute in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital.
In October, shortly after the deportations began, Dominique Dupuy, Haiti鈥檚 foreign minister at the time, told a French news station that people were chosen 鈥渂y the simple fact that they had Black skin.鈥� Some of them were not even Haitian, she claimed.
Dupuy was forced out of her job a few weeks later by a transitional council running Haiti. Both she and the new foreign minister, Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste, declined to comment.
In 2017, the last time a government survey was taken, there were nearly 500,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic, and experts estimate the number may have doubled since then.
Many experts stress that Haitians work in industries like construction and agriculture that buoy the Dominican economy.
But many Dominicans resent their presence.
鈥淚f the international community is not going to assume its responsibility, Dominicans are going to defend what鈥檚 ours, our space, our territory, our nation, our identity,鈥� said Pelegr铆n Castillo, vice president of the Fuerza Nacional Progresista party, which has led the nationalist movement.
Eduardo A. Gamarra, an international relations professor at Florida International University who served as an adviser to a former Dominican president, said authorities there were right to feel that their international calls for help had gone unanswered.
鈥淎nything really that happens in Haiti has a direct consequence on the Dominican Republic,鈥� Gamarra said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that people really fully understand that.鈥�
Still, the crush of deportations has overwhelmed nonprofit organizations at the border trying to help migrants.
At the Support Group for Returnees and Refugees, a shelter in Haiti near the Elias Pi帽a border crossing, deported migrants swarm social workers, pleading for help.
Jos茅 Alberto de los Santos, 17, said migration agents picked him up last month while he was working at a tire shop in Hig眉ey, about 30 miles west of Punta Cana, a Dominican resort town on the eastern coast.
鈥淚 told them I was Dominican,鈥� de los Santos said in perfect Spanish. 鈥淭hey asked me for my papers, and I told them I didn鈥檛 have them.鈥�
Florvil said the neighborhood north of the Haitian capital where she is from is now under gang control, so she has not returned. She makes what she can selling water near the Elias Pi帽a border crossing.
鈥淚f we had a president in our country, I don鈥檛 think that Luis Abinader would mistreat us the way he is mistreating us today,鈥� she said, referring to the Dominican leader. 鈥淗e does it because he knows that we don鈥檛 have a president who speaks for us.鈥�
This article originally appeared in . 漏 2024 The New York Times
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