Guest post by Bridget Wooding (OBMICA)
In its latest efforts to remove Haitian migrants, authorities in the Dominican Republic have introduced a slate of new immigration control measures–amongst them a new protocol requiring the presence of immigration officers in hospital maternity wards and for women without paperwork to be deported immediately. This latest cruel and misogynistic policy further deepens migrant women’s vulnerabilities, increasing the obstacles they face in accessing vital public health services.
In recent years, the Abinader administration has relentlessly pursued the deportation of Haitian migrants–ordering sweeping raids, arbitrarily detaining thousands with no due process, and carrying out mass deportations despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti (see previous blogs here and here). Despite constant calls from both local and international organisations urging authorities to cease their mistreatment of this migrant community, in April Dominican authorities further bolstered their removal efforts by introducing a slate of new immigration control measures. As well as aspects like expanding the operational capacity of the General Directorate of Immigration, reinforcing border surveillance, and accelerating the construction of the border wall, on 21 April the country introduced a new pilot scheme to carry out migration control operations within hospitals, including maternity wards.
This new protocol has been launched in the 33 hospitals that report the largest number of pregnant migrant women–mainly those of Haitian origin. According to the new scheme, immigration officers will be posted to hospitals and hospital staff must identify patients and ensure that they have valid paperwork and a letter of employment within the Dominican Republic. If such requirements are not met, the patient will be immediately deported following treatment. Of course, the overall aim of these operations is to expel Haitian women from the country, violating their need for humanitarian protection while Haiti continues to experience institutional crisis, structural crisis, and human rights violations.
The impact of the administration’s latest efforts to expel migrants is already being felt. Stories have emerged of women (and their newborn babies) being arrested and detained just after birth. The Plateforme Genre du Nord’est (PGNE), a civil society group at the norther border in Haiti, has been monitoring deportees arriving in the northeast. Since January 2025, it has registered 33,205 deportees–and as many as 3,442 in the week beginning 21 April. Since the introduction of the new protocol, the group has observed large numbers of vulnerable deportees. They note:
“The number of repatriates helped by the PGNE rose to over 3,000 persons including: young boys and girls, elderly and disabled migrants as well as unaccompanied children. Critically there were 742 women: 53 were pregnant and 60 were nursing mothers. The babies totalled 76 of whom 60 were still breastfeeding.”
The numbers being removed are so high that civil society organisations in Haiti are becoming overwhelmed. In a 25 April virtual protection meeting of actors working to receive and reintegrate repatriates, Jesula Blanc, who heads up PGNE, expressed concern that even working day and night, the voluntary group cannot sustain the complexities of receiving so many Haitian migrants in such vulnerable situations. “We are at the end of our tether,” she said.
A Note on Border Crossing Points
There are four official points for deportees to be sent through to Haiti, and the northern border is the second busiest after the central Comendador-Belladère crossing point. However, this central crossing point has become particularly dangerous since April this year when gangs advanced in the area. A hospital here, established by renowned global health champion Dr Paul Farmer, has had to shutter due to gang incursions and the route is no longer suitable for deportees given that gang presence is preventing safe return journeys to communities in the country’s interior.
While none of the main political parties in the country have objected to the new protocol, concerned civil society organisations and key health personnel have advocated for the measure to be overturned. Civil society rights defenders in the Dominican Republic have also taken to social networks using the hashtag “Cruelty is not my flag” to signal their opposition to the state’s current detention and deportation policies. Until the new migration measure is rescinded, they have pledged not to stop advocating for the proper protection of migrants, particularly women and children, and to contest rights violations and the impediments they face in accessing sexual and reproductive health.
The Haitian Foreign Minister also protested the protocol in no uncertain terms when he called the Dominican Ambassador in Port au Prince to a meeting to discuss the extraordinary turn of events. Beyond, both the UN system and the Inter-American Human Rights system have denounced it–arguing that it flouts Dominican legislation, a binational protocol with Haiti, and international conventions and jurisprudence.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
In December 2024, we (the Observatory for Caribbean Migrants (OBMICA)) carried out interviews in the east of the Dominican Republic with Haitian migrant women regarding the obstacles they face in accessing public health–especially sexual and reproductive health. Often, they reported feeling as if they are stuck between a rock and a hard place: conditions do not exist for them to remain in or return to Haiti, but they simultaneously endure a confrontational context in the Dominican Republic.
Sadly, the situation these interviewees face has since worsened. In recent weeks, many of them (those that have not been deported) have had their modest communities bulldozed in violent anti-migrant actions undertaken by the authorities. (These communities actually date back some forty years to when the tourist industry recruited Haitian workers from the cane fields to come and work in construction in the burgeoning tourism industry in Punta Cana/Bávaro.) There are no legal pathways currently to obtain status for migrants with irregular status and even those with legal status have their papers disrespected in a context where there is little to no due process. Facing conditions like these, we have started to observe some migrants making spontaneous returns–when they perceive themselves to be in the immigration firing line within the Dominican Republic, some are returning to Haiti to avoid the stranglehold of military-supported migration operations.
Bridget Wooding is the director of the Centro para la Observacion Migratoria y el Desarrollo Social en el Caribe (OBMICA), based in the Dominican Republic (https://obmica.org)
