More Haitian Misery: Deportations From The DR

Relations between Haiti and its island neighbor the Dominican Republic have been pretty bad for some time now. A few reminders about just the past ten years:

• In 2013, the Dominican Republic revoked birthright citizenship (retroactively) leaving Haitian migrants who had been living in the D.R. for generations suddenly stateless.
• This legal change lead to massive refugee camps and deportations through 2015 and 2016.

Meanwhile, things haven’t been going swimmingly in Haiti itself. There has been massive internal displacement of individuals in response to widespread violence in the country.

With this backdrop comes the latest move by the DR: a plan to deport 10,000 Haitians per week. The DR has already deported 60K Haitians this year. It would like to raise that figure to nearer 500,000.

-KitJ