As soon as the migration bus arrives, Ruth hides how you can your children and grasp in bed. You already know what they are going to do. The violations – not remember how many go – have been the irreplaceable currency so that migration agents do not deport her back to Haiti, where she came out for violence and extreme poverty five years ago. Sometimes you urinate just listening to the engine and sometimes “let it happen fast.” Anything is better than returning to your country, including this tiny wooden and zinc room where it gives its testimony anonymously in the humble Kosovo neighborhood, 15 minutes from the luxury hotels and catamaras of Punta Cana that each year open its doors to millions of tourists in search of an entire inclusive near the sea. A paradise that is partly sustained by those who are being persecuted and violated today.
Ruth’s irregular status (fictional name) is a stone in the shoe for everything. He cannot denounce migration agents who raped the police or dare to go to a hospital to rule out sexually transmitted diseases. “I’m already tired of being coming,” he says with an exhausted look, while restricting their children’s clothes in a soap bucket. Since at the beginning of April the government of Luis Abinader announced a resurgence of the immigration policy of the Dominican Republic, a large part of the irregular migrant population chose to recruit in their homes and leave as little as possible. Currently, public hospitals, the departure of schools and works have become a routine stop of the massive raids for which, only in the first 12 days of April, they deported 14,874 people. In 2024, there were 276,215.
For Guadalupe Valdez, a member of the migration and human rights collective, the main problem is that migration in the Dominican Republic looks as a problem and not as a reality. “The government is not clear how to resolve the migration issue and has adopted populist measures to please conservative sectors,” he explains. Although it is difficult for testimonies such as Ruth to arrive at the authorities for fear, their group has filed 12 similar complaints before the Public Ministry. “We have evidence for the agents to be prosecuted and removed from the immigration service,” he announces without hiding the fear that these and hundreds of human rights violations that have been increasing following April 6 are in impunity.
It was then that Abinader announced a package of 15 migratory measures with Trumpist dyes: from the acceleration of the construction of a border wall (which barely reaches 55 kilometers, on a 400 border); the increase in the military and migratory patrol template (the “eyes of the homeland” for the president); new protocols in hospitals, which will urge the deportation of the convalescent in irregular status; And what the president called a “dominicanization” of employment, with greater remuneration in the agricultural and tourist sector to encourage the hiring of national workers.
“Without Haitian labor, construction is paralyzed”
It is not a secret for any Dominican that the precariousness of both sectors is mostly accepted by undocumented workers. In the Dominican Republic, about 80% of those who work under construction are of Haitian origin; Virtually 60% of them do it informally. That is why the president of the Dominican Confederation of Micro, Small and Medium Construction Companies (Copymecon), Eliseo Cristopher, has called regularization. “If we do not have Haitian labor, definitely, the construction sector is paralyzed,” he warned. Likewise, the Minister of Agriculture recognized that deportations were seriously affecting the banana, coffee and livestock sector.
Despite criticism, the president fervently defends his hard hand. “Our identity will not be diluted. Our generosity will not be used. Here solidarity has limits,” he exclaimed after appointing Milton Ray Guevara as in charge of a commission responsible for the new immigration regulations. The former Magistrate was the president of the Constitutional Court when the sentence that left more than 130,000 people in the country was approved. “With these measures, the government is consolidating the regime of Apartheid Against Haitian people and black and vulnerable populations for a long time, ”says Roude Joseph, a common organized Lared spokesman for Dominican citizens (acknowledgment).
In mid -May, Abinader had the first of the promised “periodic meetings” with three Dominican former presidents to promote a “unified and joint” foreign policy on “border security.” After the first meeting, the ex -presidents valued “positively” the measures applied by the State. One more example, for Elena Lorec, from recognition, that there are no dissident voices in the political scene in the country: “All have normalized attacks on migration.”
The limits of the solidarity of those who spoke Abinader were perceived strongly in the classrooms of Maria, a community leader who has been looking for resources since 2009 looking for resources to keep a little school in the neighborhood that treats migrant children such as what they are: children. “I do not care if they are foreigners or not, they are my students,” he exclaims from one of the descascarillas desks. Behind her, a Dominican flag painted between students with red and blue crayons is taken off from the wall. 98% of them, Haitians. “Since they approved the measures, many stopped coming. In the first class, there were 32, today only 21. Second, there are 42 and only 24 children are coming, in this other there are 37 …”, Narra. In his wallet he retains the cap that he has received as a warning in one of the multiple threats for the work he does.
Parents who still dare to bring them running and with the uniform, to show that they are workers. The women, even with the scrubbing and brooms and them, with the fluorescent vest of the work or motorcycle taxi. Many children also began to get home alone, without understanding very well why they persecute them. So far this year, almost 7,000 Haitian people have voluntarily returned to their country.
“Ethnic Cleaning” in Punta Cana
Tourism is one of the main bets of this government. In 2024, the Caribbean island of 11 million inhabitants received the same number of tourists and 60% of them landed at Punta Cana airport. This industry represents 15% of GDP and generates an entry of foreign exchange of more than 10,000 million dollars annually. That is why the Minister of Tourism, David Collado, has insisted on several occasions: “It is an extremely important market for which we are determined to continue fighting.”
Part of that fight, according to the activists, goes through sporting costs what it costs. In the violent and clumsy process, horrible stories are repeated: deported babies alone, pregnant women or with newly made caesarean sections, young Dominicans with papers … and cases like those of Ruth. Abigail, 33, was forced to “breastfeed the cock” of one of the migration agents. Like Esther, 26, a month after giving birth and also in front of her minor children. Martina’s cousin, 14, also listened to the same words: “If you don’t want us to return you, you will have to help me.”
The social leaders of the neighborhood point out that there are many more. And that the modus operandi the last month has been similar: they arrive, steal the few savings of migrants hidden under the mattress and, sometimes, when they are young women, they demand sexual favors. “This is a cemetery of living,” says one of them, who prefers not to give his name for fear of reprisals. Elena Lorac insists: “What is being committed here is an ‘ethnic cleaning’. It is a phenotypic persecution in the attempt to bleach society, which comes from the dictatorship. This is a replica to what happens in the United States.”
This neighborhood has little or nothing to do with the luxurious hotels of Punta Cana, where all inclusive night does not drop than $ 200. However, from these impoverished neighborhoods the workforce comes out. In a corner of Kosovo, known as the pool, dozens of Haitian young people arrive early in the morning with their tools in tow to be chosen by the work foremen. “They say: I need two masons and a carpenter. And from here they take them,” explains another of the leaders. Since April 6, few dare to offer their work. Nor are there almost street foods. “Everyone is afraid, even if they have papers. They are suffocating them,” he says.
The work of the construction engineer Wady Lorenzo dawns silently. Of the thirty workers who are usually shaping these 42 sections, only six have arrived. “Thus, we will never end the work. They are very afraid to come, so I have to pay them more to arrive,” says the head of the hormizimj construction company. Asked about the president’s measures seeking the incorporation of Dominicans into the sector, he laughs. “The Dominicans have to beg them to want to work here,” he summarizes. “They can’t stand it.”
This worker explains that he has already contributed to regularize a dozen of his Haitian workers. “But those procedures are well delayed and expensive … you have to give facilities to those who come to work, because I already tell you that without the Morenos (as Haitians call in the Dominican Republic), the country will not develop. ”
Meanwhile, in the College of María, several children play a new mode of Pilla Pilla: PILLA YOU MIGRA. She separates them to ask them to play something else. “Here migration is not going to enter, because if you enter we are going to have problems. To take them they will have to kill me,” he says on. But the activist does not rule out that migration agents in schools are the following horror stamp of her country.
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