The other side of Punta Cana: A crackdown on Haitians

“It’s a business,” said a former immigration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. “You pay on the border, you pay when they stop you on the street, you pay when they search for you in your home.”

A two-year crackdown on undocumented migrants here, broadly supported by Dominicans, has left Haitians vulnerable to the worst abuses, U.S. and U.N. officials say. Interviews with dozens of Haitians, their advocates and former immigration officials show that agents routinely extort suspected Haitians under threat of detention and deportation. Reports of physical and sexual assaults have become frequent, according to the U.S. State Department and the International Organization for Migration.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola, uneasy neighbors with a long history of conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians work here on farms and in construction, clean homes and do other jobs Dominicans are loath to take up. But Haitian families can live here for generations without gaining Dominican citizenship, and their undocumented status leaves them vulnerable to exploitation.

Now, as Haiti melts down — its presidency vacant, its legislature gone home, its capital controlled by gangs — the government of Dominican President Luis Abinader has empowered immigration agents to ramp up deportations. Authorities removed at least 176,000 Haitians last year in what the State Department called a “mass expulsion … regardless of their claims to legal status.” The United States, by comparison, deported 717 Haitians in the last fiscal year.

As part of the crackdown, the Dominican government imposed new requirements for renewing temporary residency permits — bureaucratic hurdles that have caused another 200,000 Haitians to fall out of legal status. And for eight months starting last year, authorities stopped granting appointments to Haitians trying to renew their visas, affecting thousands more.

For Abinader, the effort has been a political winner. On Sunday, he was reelected president with more than 59 percent of the votes, according to preliminary results.

But even he acknowledges abuses in the immigration system. Recent prosecutions and convictions show the government is addressing the problem, he said last week, but “we have to continue advancing in this matter.”

Given the “very special situation we have in Haiti,” he said, the “operations of the immigration department have increased tenfold. … The borders are very sensitive.”

His administration will continue to fight corruption, he said: “I have to recognize that it is ongoing.”

Abinader has expanded the role of the Interior Ministry and national police in preventing and prosecuting “irregular invasions and occupations” by foreigners. Over the past year, advocates say, police and military troops have taken an increasingly prominent role in the effort.

In a recent report, the State Department cited allegations that Dominican immigration, police and military officials entered homes without warrants, demanded bribes, destroyed identification documents and stole belongings. The department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor noted accusations of arbitrary detentions, unexplained deaths in migration detention, physical abuse of detainees, extortion and sexual violence.

The Dominican government, the bureau reported, “did not take credible steps to identify and punish officials who may have committed human rights abuses.”

Unsanctioned raids have become especially common in Punta Cana. It was in a Haitian neighborhood here, at 5 a.m. one day last month, that a uniformed Air Force member allegedly entered a small, white wooden house, authorities said in charging documents. Inside, a 14-year-old girl was watching over two younger brothers.

The 18-year-old airman had been tasked with helping execute an immigration raid. It was still dark. The children’s parents were out. As immigration agents and troops rounded up Haitians and filed them into a truck, the airman was alone with the girl, she told prosecutors, according to the documents. He wore a balaclava over his face, she said, but took it off.

“He told me to be quiet, and he asked me for a kiss. I said no,” the girl told prosecutors. “That was when he grabbed me by the neck and took me to my room.”

A neighbor heard the screams. She walked in to find the girl in tears, her dress ripped, the woman told prosecutors. The girl and her mother accused the airman of rape; he was arrested. The Washington Post is not identifying the girl or her mother because she is a minor and reported a crime of sexual abuse.

The airman has denied having any contact with the girl. He said he does not enter homes during raids. The Post could not reach the airman for comment because he is in custody.

The alleged assault has drawn international attention. But Haitians and their advocates here say it wasn’t particularly unusual. It’s emblematic, they say, of systematic abuse by Dominican authorities — abuse that typically goes unreported by families fearful of being deported.

As prosecutors interviewed witnesses of the alleged rape of the girl, one immigration agent spoke of his frustration with military officers “who get out of control.”

Juan Paniagua, disturbed by the case, resigned days later, he told The Post. He was fed up, he said, with masked men kicking down doors and abusing people.

“They’re the Rambos,” Paniagua said. “They wear masks to do harm. … It breaks my heart.”

‘A war trophy’

Thousands of tourists, drawn by the white sand beaches and turquoise waters of this oceanside resort, land at the Punta Cana airport each day. Nearly 120,000 Americans arrived in April alone.

The tourism boom here, hailed as a success story, can be seen in the new hotels and apartment buildings rising over the lush landscape. According to the local construction union, about 90 percent of the workers on these projects are Haitians.

Hundreds gather by a busy highway here each morning to wait for the pickup trucks that will take them to construction sites.

When word spread one morning this month that immigration agents were rounding people up, a large group of young men bolted across the highway, dodging cars to reach the thick brush on the other side.

Across town, men in balaclavas could be seen stopping drivers and demanding documents.

Junior Surin has a visa to work in the Dominican Republic. But after learning of the day’s operation on an “antenna” — the community’s name for a WhatsApp channel — he decided to stay home. “I’m scared to go out.” He was shot in the arm by authorities last year, he said, while agents rounded up construction workers returning from work in Cap Cana, the coastal resort just south of Punta Cana.

When authorities are cracking down, an engineer at one job site said, only a third of his workforce show up.

Reports of raids, theft and extortion are particularly common in Punta Cana, according to Josué Gastelbondo, who leads the International Organization for Migration in the Dominican Republic. Haitians working in construction or tourism here might make more than those working elsewhere in the country, he said, and, locked out of most banks, are likely to keep cash in their homes.

“It’s like a war trophy,” said Santiago Molina, a local activist. “Everything they find is theirs.”

Governments here have carried out mass deportations in the past. But advocates say this wave is the largest and most sustained. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights urged Abinader in 2022 to halt deportations. Instead, he announced an increase. Deportations that year doubled from the previous year, and have continued to spike.

The government reports deporting 174,602 Haitians in 2023. IOM puts the number at more than 224,000.

Many Dominicans support Abinader’s approach. Some say they fear potential spillover from the lawlessness in Haiti, where armed gangs have kidnapped, raped or killed thousands of people.

“For years, what we’ve been seeing is a silent invasion,” Lourdes Fernández, a 62-year-old teacher from Santiago. She said she fears that Haitians could someday try to claim the Dominican Republic as part of their country.

“There is a national consensus on this issue,” former president Leonel Fernández, who ran unsuccessfully against Abinader on Sunday, told The Post. He supports a strong approach to securing the border and deporting undocumented Haitians, he said, but the next president must confront the “mafias” — including those within the immigration system — who extort and take advantage of the vulnerable.

Altagracia Luis Jean had just been paid for her job as a housekeeper at a Punta Cana hotel, she said, when immigration agents stormed into her home in the Haitian neighborhood of Mata Mosquito. They broke the lock with a hammer and stole $100 from her purse.

Luis Jean, 41, is Dominican. The agents detained and deported her Haitian husband and her 21-year-old son, who was born here but has struggled to get the paperwork to prove he is a citizen.

It was his first time in Haiti.

“I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, worried they would kill him over there,” Luis Jean said.

She hired a “buscón,” or “seeker,” who bribed border agents to bring her husband, her son and his partner back home. It cost more than $800.

A divided family

Before dawn on April 5, six masked agents walked down the dark, narrow pathway to Jeanne Rimbel’s home. They entered the bedroom where she was sleeping with her 5-year-old son, she said, and took 30,000 pesos — more than $500 — from her bedside drawer.

Later that morning, she heard the screams. It was the mother of the girl who reported the rape.

The mother had left early that morning for her job as a cook. The girl’s stepfather, hearing that immigration agents were approaching, was hiding at a friend’s house.

“When you don’t have papers, you run away,” he told The Post.

Nine immigration agents were searching for undocumented migrants that morning, according to the charging documents. Three Air Force members were providing security.

Venancio Alcántara, the country’s immigration director, says military troops should not enter homes or act as immigration agents. They may remove migrants who are occupying private or public spaces illegally, he told The Post, and are permitted to knock down doors to do so.

One former immigration official questioned why Air Force members were involved in an immigration raid to begin with. “That’s not their role,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. “They should be at the border.”

A spokeswoman for the Defense Ministry declined to comment.

The 14-year-old girl has struggled to go back to school, her stepfather told The Post. She’s now at a safe house for women and children with her mother and her brothers.

The stepfather’s Haitian passport expired last month, and he doesn’t know how he’ll renew it. He has no Dominican documents allowing him to remain in the country legally.

“Haiti is in a bad place. That’s why I came here,” he said. “I’d like to stay here, with my family.”

Carolina Pichardo in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Widlore Mérancourt in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report.