Haitians who had crossed into the frontier market zone shared with the Dominican Republic for work made their way back through the river below the border gate after it had been closed for the day. A Dominican government plan could deport tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Haitian migrants.
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
SABANETA, Dominican Republic — For decades, the people of Barrio Cementerio, a neighborhood divided evenly between Dominicans and Haitians, have shared a peaceful coexistence. Proximity smothered prejudice: Working side by side and raising families together helped keep tensions in check.
That is changing now. A government plan that could deport tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people of Haitian descent from the Dominican Republic has started to tear at the unity that once bound this place, forcing residents to pick a side.
A bitter landlord stopped renting to a Haitian tenant. The head of the local Red Cross says the deportations are long overdue, while a gang leader promises to hide his Haitian friends from the authorities. A Dominican husband fears losing his wife and their children, who have no papers. A police officer agonizes over the prospect of having to deport his best friend, who came to this country illegally from Haiti.
“I have no choice,” said John Tapia Thomas, the police officer, outside his friend’s makeshift Internet cafe. “It saddens me to think about being ordered to detain someone I really care about. It will be hard not to make exceptions, but I have to go about my job as professionally as I can.”
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Yibel Solimo shows the ID he was given as a temporary worker in the Dominican Republic’s cane fields. He hopes it will spare him from deportation. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Like much of the country, Barrio Cementerio is split, creating a patchwork of sympathy, prejudice and resentment born of crowded schools, competition for jobs and a beleaguered health care system. Locals note that the Dominican Republic is a poor country that can ill afford the strain.
But the Dominican Republic, which is also trying to tighten its borders in a separate effort called Operation Shield, is hardly alone in dealing with migrants with policies that rights groups challenge. The surge in migration from conflict and economic hardship has rattled nations the world over, from Australia to the United States.
After threatening to breach European law by kicking out migrants, Hungary announced plans last month to build a 109-mile fence to keep out those hoping to enter the European Union from Serbia — unleashing protests from Serbia’s prime minister, who said it would turn his country into an Auschwitz.
Bulgaria announced plans in April to stretch its border fence with Turkey another 80 miles, as part of its “containment plan.” Australia stops migrants arriving by sea and sends them to Papua New Guinea.
Long before that, the United States was deporting hundreds of thousands of people and building walls to keep out migrants. Now, the front line is moving south. Under pressure from American authorities, Mexico deported almost twice as many Central American migrants through April of this year than in the first four months of 2014.
“It’s a period of unprecedented human mobility, the greatest on record with one billion people on the move,” said William L. Swing, the director general of the International Organization for Migration, which helped the Dominican government register nearly 300,000 immigrants who were in the country illegally, out of an estimated 524,000.
“There is a resurgence of antimigrant sentiment driven by fear: fear of a loss of jobs, fear of the post 9/11 security syndrome, and then mostly the fear of a loss of identity,” he added.
The Dominican government’s threat to deport Haitians has been popular domestically, playing on the frustrations many Dominicans feel toward their poorer neighbors on the island of Hispaniola.
The politics are pretty straightforward. President Danilo Medina recently announced his campaign for re-election next year. Many praise his efforts to register migrants and expel those in the country illegally.
Sporadic deportations have happened, but so far, with the world watching, the Dominican government has not carried out the mass expulsions many Haitians fear.
Still, the threat of being seized has led more than 31,000 Haitians to leave on their own, according to government figures, opting to cart their belongings across the border rather than risk losing everything in a sudden deportation.
Others say that not all of these departures are voluntary.
Dominican guards shutting the border with Haiti for the day. The surge of global migration from conflict and economic hardship has rattled nations the world over, from Australia to the United States.
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
“People returning are telling me that the police are working with street gangs to force out immigrants in the big cities,” said one Haitian border guard, clutching a clipboard with the names of Haitians who had crossed that day. “Strangers are going door to door late at night and threatening to burn people’s houses down.”
Near the city of Puerto Plata, Haitians said that unknown Dominican men had arrived at their doors in the middle of the night, yelling threats to return home.
The Organization of American States said last week that it would send a delegation to the Dominican Republic to examine the migration situation, including whether or not Haitian migrants have been forced out.
In the border town of Dajabón, trucks loaded with furniture and tattered mattresses trundled through crowds passing over the battered Friendship Bridge, which stretches across a river where in 1937 a Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, ordered the massacre of more than 10,000 Haitians.
Twice a week, thousands of Haitian merchants are allowed to cross over to buy and sell everything from used clothes to crockery. In one market stall, a throng of Haitian men collected mounds of used T-shirts, stuffing them into plastic bags for a Dominican shop owner, Juan Liriano, who says he is conflicted about the deportations.
He pays Haitian workers about $3.50 a day, and food. He must pay Dominicans nearly $11, not including transportation. But he says people must follow the immigration law.
“If I went to America without papers, I would be deported,” he said. “What’s the difference?”
Joseph Vilno, one of his Haitian workers, supports a wife and four children back home.
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Haitians who entered the Dominican Republic to work for the day returned via the river after a border gate was closed. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Mr. Vilno paid a smuggler $65 to ferry him over the border, a small fortune for him. Now he wonders if he will be deported, and if he can sneak back again.
“I have no choice,” Mr. Vilno said as Mr. Liano placed a hand on his shoulder, warm yet paternalistic. “There is nothing for me in Haiti.”
In the capital, Santo Domingo, the plan to register — or deport — Haitians has gone over well with many Dominicans, who often complain that illegal migration is a drag on the public system.
“I think they should deport them,” said Fiorela Olivero, 26, walking with her husband and two children. “Haitians are invading our country. There is a Haitian on every corner.”
Felis Rosario, 54, is Dominican, but with his dark skin, he says he is often mistaken for Haitian. The other day, he recalled, an immigration truck stopped him in the street and ordered him to get in.
“I told him, ‘I am more Dominican than you because you are from a hill and I’m from the capital,’ ” he said he yelled back at the officer.
In Barrio Cementerio, a neighborhood in the small town of Sabaneta, everyone knows everyone.
Some stand behind their Haitian friends, refusing to be baited by the political winds in Santo Domingo. Others say that, friendships aside, it is time for migrants here illegally to leave.
“If I’m living in this or any country as an immigrant, then I should get a job and work to make enough money to legalize myself,” said Francisco Peguero, the president of the local Red Cross, who counts Haitians here illegally among his friends.
Just down the street, Fibian, a young Dominican gang leader, refused to yield.
“If the police sends a patrol to my neighborhood looking for my friends, I am going to hide them in my house,” he said, standing inside his tin shack. “I don’t understand why you would even ask me that.”
Roberto, a Dominican who works at a souvenir shop in the nearby town of Cabarete, is married to Yoseline, a woman of Haitian descent.
She has no documentation, though not for lack of trying. She obtained an affidavit with seven witnesses testifying that she was born in the Dominican Republic. Two days before the government’s registration deadline last month, the family received a letter stating that the paperwork was insufficient.
“Imagine if your wife was born here but faces deportation to a country she knows nothing about,” said Roberto, who spoke on the condition that his family not be identified by last name. “She would be taken away, and our marriage and lives would be torn apart.”
Their children, ages 3 and 1, would be forced to go with her, he fears. They, too, have no documents.
Nearby, two Johns sat together in a lip of shade cast by the awning of the local Internet cafe. One, John Presime, is the Haitian owner of the cafe, who sneaked into the country a decade ago at 14. The other is John Tapia Thomas, the police officer.
For the last year, Mr. Tapia has tried to persuade his Haitian friends to register, passing them advice about which notary was cheapest, which registration centers had the shortest lines and which lawyers were honest.
But many could not complete the steps, because of bureaucratic or financial hurdles.
“A lot of the Haitians who have paid fees but keep having to pay more and submit more documents feel like they are being robbed,” the police officer said.
That, it seems, is what happened to Mr. Presime. Though he has a receipt, he has no formal documentation to prevent deportation. And Mr. Tapia is left with an impossible choice, between his job and his friend.
“Now, we are close to the end,” he said.
Joanna Berendt contributed reporting from Warsaw, Poland.
Haitian women sold secondhand clothes at the frontier market zone in the Dominican Republic. Twice a week, the border is opened so people can pass freely to go to work, or to buy and sell at the market without registering with border officials.
Fidelina Bernardoz, 46, nursed her infant, Miguelito, at her home constructed of tree branches and sheet metal in Batey Naranjo, an impoverished community of sugar cane workers of primarily Haitian descent on the outskirts of Santo Domingo. Ms. Bernardoz was born in Haiti and came to the Dominican Republic illegally.
Fibian, center, the leader of a gang with Dominican and Haitian members, at the grave of a friend who died in a motorcycle accident. For decades, the people of Barrio Cementerio, a small riverside neighborhood divided evenly between Dominicans and Haitians, have coexisted peacefully.
Girls had their hair braided in Batey Naranjo. The Dominican government’s threat to deport Haitians has been popular domestically, playing on the frustration felt by many Dominicans toward their poorer neighbors.
Eline Peire, 23, a Haitian at risk of being deported, at a church in Barrio Cementerio. Sporadic deportations have happened over the last few months, but so far, with the world watching intently, the Dominican government has not carried out the mass expulsions that many Haitians here fear.
Children jumped rope with a discarded hose in Batey Naranjo. The threat of being seized has led more than 12,000 Haitians to leave on their own, according to government figures, opting to cart their belongings across the border rather than risk losing everything in a sudden deportation.
A couple who would be identified only as Roberto and Yoseline with their children, aged 1 and 3, at their home in Sabaneta. Yoseline has been unable to prove her citizenship.
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
I don’t understand why Roberto, Dominican Citizen, can’t obtain papers for his “wife” Yoseline? If they are are legally married and he is a Dominican citizen, she is entitled to citizenship by marriage. Something is wrong with this story. Roberto’s children,with a Dominican father, are also Dominican. Meridith Kohut needs to get her facts straights before she prints her stories.
Marisol
Please don’t try to apply common sense, justice, or reality to the Dominican/Haitian situation.
The Dominican government has decided that it wants to get rid of a lot of non-productive Haitians, now that the sugar industry is in decline. Forget about people being married to Dominican citizens in a governmental trap that has legislated that anyone, from 1929 until now, can be declared as “in transit.” A 5th generation child becomes “in transit” under the laws of 2005.
Those Haitians, working in construction, or the hotel industry are said to have no problems.
Getting paperwork completed, under normal circumstances, is a diabolical problem. Now that the Dominican government has set the stage, paperwork becomes impossible. People jump through the hoops to acquire documents, only to be told these are the wrong ones, during their next appointment.
Something isn’t wrong with the story, as you suggest.
Something is wrong with the Dominican Republic’s government.
I will continue remain in near complete disagreement with your views on this situation while remaining in complete “d’accord” with your “critique politique” of the Haitian electoral storm; we will politely agree to disagree on the former topic.
Quite honestly I wish the USA would consider changing from Jus Soli to Jus Sangre birth law- it has become the most abused aspect of our own illegal immigration debacle. To require that one parent be a legal resident of the U.S. for a child to receive citizenship seems like a sensible requirement. Que pensez-vous?