Reseña

Starting in 2021, the Dominican regime launched the largest deportation campaign against people of Haitian-origin in the country’s history. While the National Institute of Migration estimates that the Haitian community in the Dominican Republic numbers around half a million people, in a country with a population of around 11 million, more than one million deportations have taken place over the past five years. In practice, the Constitution and Dominican laws have been suspended, with a de facto state of exception enforced to carry out thousands of warrantless raids on homes and thousands of arrests based solely on racial profiling. The mass deportations also violate the American Convention on Human Rights and other international treaties signed by the Dominican state.

To justify the mass deportations, the Dominican regime has deployed propaganda portraying the Haitian immigrant community as an economic burden and a threat to national security and Dominican sovereignty. In reality, official statistics debunk the myth of the economic burden while there is no evidence of a security threat or a threat to sovereignty.

Arbitrary arrests have affected Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, with or without identification documents; and, to a lesser degree black Dominicans and people of other nationalities with no known Haitian ancestry. This report documented the deaths of 54 people of Haitian origin between 2021 and mid-2025, resulting from actions by Dominican repressive forces, as well as while in the custody of the authorities. Cases of ill-treatment, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual assault, extortion, and robbery by the authorities have been registered in the context of immigration repression. As part of this investigation, 28 victims of State violence in the context of the mass deportations campaign were interviewed, including victims of mob violence and the burning of homes with police complicity, victims of arbitrary detention, human trafficking, police robbery and extortion, as well as attempted murder. One survivor was shot by police officers, and another was thrown by an officer from the roof of a building. A recurring theme in these testimonies is the dehumanization to which Haitians are subjected. One of the victims, a 27-year-old man whose wife was arbitrarily detained despite having her papers in order, stated: “We have no value here; they treat us like animals,” adding that he fears for his life in the Dominican Republic. A 36-year-old woman who was arbitrarily detained said: “They treated me as if I were disposable, as if I were useless, as if I were dead.”