Santo Domingo.- The Dominican Republic repatriated more than 276,000 undocumented foreigners in 2024, a year in which the Government of the Caribbean nation toughened its immigration policy, especially affecting Haitian immigrants.
A statement released this Wednesday by the General Directorate of Migration (DGM) detailed that in the January-March quarter, 48,344 foreigners were repatriated, between April and June 62,446 and from July to September 71,414, although without specifying the nationalities of the undocumented.
Meanwhile, in the last quarter of 2024, 94,223 were repatriated, 34.1% more than in the same period of 2023, according to the information.
It was precisely at the beginning of last October that the Government of President Luis Abinader announced that it will repatriate up to 10,000 undocumented immigrants per week, an action that mainly affects Haitians, whose country shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
The Government then said that the decision “seeks to reduce the excess migrant population that is perceived in Dominican communities.”
In its statement this Wednesday, the DGM assured that these repatriations are carried out “respecting the human rights of the interdicts and the international agreements to which the country is a signatory, following the policy and guidelines of the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader.”
Likewise, he stated that in the last quarter of the year that just ended “an exhaustive review of the organization and procedures” of the DGM “has been carried out to implement an update plan, the objective of which is for it to be able to fulfill the mission it assigned by the Constitution and the law.
More than half a million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, according to different sources, and data from the current Government assure that medical care for Haitian immigrants represented 12% of the total services provided through the Dominican public health system.
Furthermore, according to Abinader, there are currently close to 200,000 foreign minors in Dominican schools, of which it is estimated that 147,906 are of Haitian origin. These data “reflect the great economic burden and humanitarian sense of the Dominican Republic, but we cannot do it alone,” Abinader stated last September in his speech before the UN General Assembly.
