Regardless of needing medical consideration, Jean-Pierre was reportedly afraid to go to the hospital. Why? She feared being deported.
Jean-Pierre was not improper to be afraid. Quickly after her dying, paramedics arrived with law enforcement officials to examine on the new child and detain her husband, Ronald Jean. Jean left the new child with a relative as he waited to be deported.
Between April 21 and the tip of Could this yr, 900 lactating or pregnant ladies had been deported from the Dominican to Haiti. They’re a part of the brand new, excessive tough-on-immigration insurance policies within the Dominican Republic. In Could alone, 22,778 Haitians had been deported to Haiti.
A brand new wave of mass deportations
Final October, the Dominican authorities initiated a brand new wave of mass deportations as President Luis Abinader ordered a quota of 10,000 Haitians deported per week. On April 6, he introduced new extraordinary measures to manage immigration.
The rollout of this coverage started on April 21. Migration officers had been assigned to work in hospitals and required migrants to indicate their paperwork earlier than receiving medical care or face deportation.
The brand new protocol doesn’t specify pregnant and breastfeeding ladies. Nevertheless, it successfully targets them in hospitals. Proof of that is the truth that the coverage was instantly applied within the 33 hospitals “that report the largest number of pregnant migrant women — mainly those of Haitian origin.”
An indication in assist of Dominican President-elect Luis Abinader adorns a motorcycle within the Los Guandules neighborhood of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in Could 2024.
(AP Photograph/Matias Delacroix)
The focusing on of pregnant ladies just isn’t new
The focusing on of pregnant migrants within the DR isn’t new. In September 2021, the Ministry of the Inside and Police introduced a protocol to restrict pregnant migrant ladies’s entry to well being care within the DR.
Dozens of deportation raids had been carried out in maternity wards within the capital and different massive city centres. In accordance with immigration officers, attendance at pre-natal appointments fell by 80 per cent by the tip of 2021.
Deportation raids in maternity wards slowed down between 2022 and 2024, however ladies had been nonetheless afraid to go for his or her check-up appointments. Pre-natal care is crucial in stopping maternal deaths.
In accordance with a media report, the Dominican’s Nationwide Well being System estimates that Haitian ladies accounted for 56 per cent of maternal deaths within the first half of 2022.
No paperwork, no well being care
There are nearly no methods for Haitians within the Dominican Republic to use for or renew visas. And Dominican consulates in Haiti have been closed since September 2022.
There’s a lengthy historical past of a scarcity of documentation amongst Dominicans of Haitian ancestry, exacerbated by the denationalization of as much as 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian ancestry in 2013. Which means Dominican-Haitians are additionally vulnerable to being deported when accessing well being care.
This occurred to Mirryam Ferdinad who, in accordance with neighborhood reviews, went to a hospital for a programmed Caesarean part and was as a substitute detained in Haina, the nation’s largest migrant detention centre. Ferdinad was launched on Could 31.
Deportations are anticipated to happen after individuals get better from their illnesses. However human rights organizations report that deportations usually happen in unsanitary and unsafe situations, in vehicles crammed past capability.
A toddler stands amid individuals who had been detained for deportation to Haiti inside a police truck on a border bridge that connects Dajabon, Dominican Republic with Haiti in March 2024.
(AP Photograph/Ricardo Hernandez)
Structural racism
Elena Lorac, co-founder of Reconocido, an advocacy group of denationalized Dominicans of Haitian descent, stated the scenario is exacerbated by structural racism.
Anti-Black racism and anti-Haitianism runs by the politics of the Dominican Republic, whereby Blackness is related to undesirable cultural and bodily traits, and linked to neighbouring Haiti.
In distinction, DR’s nationalist teams, such because the Antigua Orden Dominicana, emphasize their colonial Spanish roots.
Reproductive well being rights below assault
Haitian pregnant ladies are between a rock and a tough place. Hemorrhages and unsafe abortions are among the many important causes of maternal mortality. Most of those instances are preventable if pregnant individuals have entry to well being companies.
Haiti has the very best maternal mortality within the Western hemisphere.
Maternal mortality within the DR is decrease. However its mistreatment of pregnant migrants, and its criminalization of abortion in all circumstances, pose vital dangers for girls.
Abortion activists protest the proposal of a regulation, below debate by lawmakers, that might preserve a complete abortion ban in place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, July 17, 2024. Activists concern it can cut back penalties for sexual violence and fail to guard the LGBTQ neighborhood.
(AP Photograph/Ricardo Hernandez)
Haiti: A rustic in humanitarian disaster
Deported migrants often haven’t any household or social networks within the places they’re deported at. They usually have restricted to no entry to well being companies and social companies.
Dominican-Haitians additionally get deported as a result of they haven’t any authorized paperwork regardless of having lived there their entire lives. They typically have by no means been to Haiti, and barely communicate Haitian Creole.
In Haiti, about 40 per cent of major well being care was funded by the now nearly fully defunded United States Company for Worldwide improvement (USAID).
Although there are some teams supporting deportees, international cuts to humanitarian businesses just like the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees and Worldwide Group for Migration are affecting personnel on the bottom. The humanitarian situations in Haiti are more and more difficult.
Monetary cuts worsen the extraordinarily precarious dwelling situations. 9 per cent of the inhabitants is internally displaced. Greater than half the inhabitants is predicted to expertise acute meals insecurity by June.
Haitians wait to be admitted into the Dominican Repubic within the border city of Belladere, Haiti, March 5, 2021. Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader introduced that his administration would construct a ‘dividing line’ between his nation and Haiti.
(AP Photograph)
Protesting violence
On Could 28, 13 organizations led an indication in entrance of the Dominican Republic Well being Ministry. Peasant ladies, home staff, artists and feminists demanded an finish to deportation raids in maternity wards and the elimination of immigration officers from hospitals.
In entrance of the Dominican Ministry of Well being, feminist and staff organizations maintain up posters calling for a halt on obstetric violence in opposition to Haitian migrants and Dominican-Haitians, Could 28, 2025.
(Lorena Espinoza Peña)
Sirana Dolis, co-founder of Motion of Dominican-Haitian Ladies MUDHA, stated of the scenario:
“Haitian women and women of Haitian descent are a people who love life, but under these circumstances, reproduction is like a death sentence.”
