This piece is part of a series on hemispheric approaches to anti-Haitianism.
In a dramatic escalation of mass expulsion, the Dominican Republic has deported more than 27,000 people to Haiti in the last three weeks. On October 2, the anniversary of the 1937 genocidal state-sponsored massacre of Haitians and their descendants in the Dominican Republic, the government of President Luis Abinader announced plans to deport up to 10,000 Haitians per week. Continuing at this pace, the campaign would amount to over 500,000 deportations in one year, double the 2023 total of 251,011 expulsions. A government spokesperson said the plan is aimed at “reducing the excess migrant population” in the Dominican Republic, home to the second-largest Haitian diaspora after the United States.
Dominican authorities appear to be primarily relying on racial profiling to carry out the deportation campaign, as Black Dominicans, Dominicans of Haitian descent, and Haitians with legal immigration statuses have consistently been swept up in raids and detained. Extremist far-right groups are the campaign’s biggest proponents, and these groups have capitalized on the moment to attack organizations supporting Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Whether in the Dominican Republic or elsewhere, Haitian immigrants often move through the world with a target on their backs—hypervisible Black bodies in mobility. Yet the Haitian immigrant leaders I work with also often experience what they describe as feeling invisible to service providers and the government agencies and international institutions that have a mandate to protect them. A hemispheric perspective allows us to see how both hypervisibility and invisibility define the experiences of Haitian immigrants, who face severe discrimination due to their race and nationality.
In the Dominican Republic, Haitians and their descendants are increasingly living in a state of terror. Since the launch of the latest deportation campaign, police and military presence has heightened. Workers in the agricultural sector have been heavily targeted, and there have been reports of immigration and law enforcement agents snatching children off the streets on their way to school. In 2022 alone, Dominican authorities deported 1,800 unaccompanied children, making family separation the norm. For nearly three years, authorities have also targeted pregnant women seeking care in maternal health centers and hospitals.
These immigration raids and mass detentions often employ extreme and violent measures. Amid the latest crackdown, Dominican troops fired live ammunition at a bus in the border province of Montecristi, rupturing its tires. Once the bus was immobilized, the operation detained 18 Haitian passengers, including children and elderly people. Meanwhile, in detention, conditions are deplorable. On October 17, protests broke out at the Haina detention center, the country’s main immigration detention facility, to decry the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions and lack of food and water.
Collective expulsions are prohibited under international law. And yet, the Dominican Republic, which currently serves on the United Nations Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body “responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe,” has unabashedly claimed mass deportations as its official policy.
Precedents for Hemisphere-wide Action
In collaboration with Haitian migrant rights leaders in various countries, I launched the Hemispheric Network for Haitian Migrants’ Rights (Rezo Emisferik pou Dwa Migran Ayisyen) in 2023. This initiative responds both to the Haitian immigrant community’s hypervisibility and vulnerability to race-based discrimination and to the invisibility of Haitian and Black immigrants in migration policy, discourse, and resource allocation. As convener of the Hemispheric Network, I have connected with Haitian migrant rights leaders from 14 countries in the past year and a half, listening to their experiences and working with them to build collective calls to action. As far-right nationalists in the United States and the Dominican Republic seek to score political points by deporting and denigrating Haitian immigrants, institutional allies need to step up to forcefully and publicly condemn racist migration policies and advocate for alternatives that protect Haitian immigrant rights.
In 2018, as outmigration from Venezuela continued to mount, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) launched a platform to coordinate a regional response to the situation, R4V: Inter-agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela. No such mechanism has been created to support Haitians despite the fact that more than half a million Haitians have emigrated in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, UNHCR has been calling for states to stop forced returns to Haiti since 2022, and Haitians have often been one of the largest groups crossing through the life-threatening Darien Gap. Our network and others have called for UNHCR and IOM to create a comparable regional mechanism for Haitians to begin to remedy the longstanding, woefully insufficient protections and support for this migrant population across the region.
One existing tool that Haitians can leverage to access greater protections is the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees. With Cartagena, Latin American signatory countries broadened the definition of “refugee” to include people who are fleeing “generalized violence… massive human rights violations or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.” Yet, despite the pervasive violence and human rights violations perpetrated by armed groups in Haiti over the past several years, only one country has recognized Haitians as refugees under that definition. After targeted advocacy, Mexican officials now recognize as of this year that conditions of “generalized violence” exist in Haiti. This means that Mexico may provide refugee status to Haitians on this basis.
Now, 40 years after Cartagena, in a process dubbed Cartagena+40, signatory states are reflecting on what still needs to be done to fulfill the spirit of the declaration and develop an action plan to address displacement in the region in the upcoming decade. Through this process, states have an opportunity to provide Haitian nationals with the refugee protections the Cartagena Declaration affords.
A Call for Transnational Solidarity
Haitian immigrants experience racism and discrimination almost everywhere they go. Because of the myriad obstacles they face when attempting to access protections and services, these migrants often feel invisible. Yet they are also hypervisible, as demonstrated by the recent racist vitriol and dehumanizing tropes directed at Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Haitians’ mistreatment and marginalization—their experience of hypervisibility—is made worse by the failure of states and institutions across the hemisphere to treat them equally to other migrant populations, let alone provide them with the support they need to address and combat the discrimination they face.
This extreme vulnerability does not have to continue. Tools, services, and mechanisms to protect Haitian immigrants and asylum-seekers exist, but they are not being employed. As Haitian migration has transformed into a hemisphere-wide phenomenon since the 2010 earthquake, regional human rights mechanisms and instruments could benefit Haitians in mobility.
In the meantime, Haitians and those of Haitian descent are not simply waiting for states and international institutions to defend their rights or to provide protection. We are organizing to defend and advocate for ourselves and our communities, locally and transnationally.
At a moment when Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent are so vulnerable in the Dominican Republic, solidarity outside Dominican borders is not just important, it is essential. The lack of swift and strong condemnation of the Dominican Republic’s current deportation campaign by the international community—including by the UNHCR, which has an official presence in the Dominican Republic—further underscores the need for solidarity among Haitian migrants and in partnership with allies.
In the last two months, our monthly network calls have enabled advocates in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Springfield to share accurate information about rapidly evolving situations and collaborate on crisis response and advocacy with Haitian migrant rights leaders in over a dozen countries. As a hemispheric network from Canada to Chile, we call on states and regional and international institutions to recognize the need to provide targeted interventions and resources to denounce, address, and remedy the hypervisibility and invisibility of Haitian immigrants in the Americas and the egregious human rights violations they experience.
As I interface with Haitian migrant rights leaders from different countries throughout the hemisphere, the stories I hear—experiences of minimal support and services, language access challenges, anti-Black racism, and anti-Haitianism—are far too similar for us not to be more connected across borders.
Gabrielle Apollon is a human rights attorney and Director of the Haitian Immigrant Rights Project at NYU School of Law’s Global Justice Clinic. She is Haitian Canadian and a former immigration attorney. Apollon coordinates the Hemispheric Network for Haitian Migrants’ Rights.
