FILE PHOTO: A woman pushes a wheelbarrow after Haitians were allowed into a market for needed essentials and trade, as gang violence continues in the aftermath of the resignation of Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry, at a farmer's market in the border town of Dajabon, Dominican Republic, March 18, 2024. REUTERS/Fran Afonso/File Photo
SANTO DOMINGO/PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's foreign minister on Monday blasted a policy announced last week by the neighboring Dominican Republic to deport tens of thousands of migrants back into Haiti, where gang violence is fueling a devastating humanitarian crisis.
"The brutal scenes of roundups and deportations that we are witnessing are an affront to human dignity," foreign minister Dominique Dupuy said on X. "We strongly condemn these dehumanizing acts and demand respect and justice."
The Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti, last week said it would deport up to 10,000 migrants per week who were in the country illegally, a significant increase from the previous rate.
It did not specify Haitians but nationals from its neighbor make up the vast majority of those it deports.
The Dominican government blames the chaotic situation in Haiti for causing crime and security issues at home, and says it has lost patience with the slow progress of an international security mission mandated to help resolve Haiti's crisis.
The United Nations has asked countries in the region to halt deportations of Haitians back to a situation of danger.
If the Dominican target is met - up to 520,000 in a year - this would be more than double the over 200,000 Haitians forcibly returned last year. Over 4,900 Haitians were deported in the first week of October, a Dominican official who declined to be named told Reuters.
Dupuy said the Dominican policy contravenes international human rights standards and that she had alerted relevant international bodies.
Her statement followed the circulation of unverified social media footage that appears to show a crowd running from Dominican officials off a highway near Punta Cana, a popular tourist resort.
On Monday, Dominican media reported that the highway was the site of a protest by Haitian construction workers calling on their employers to issue them work permits so they are not deported.
The Dominican Republic's migration agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
William Charpentier, who heads the Dominican Republic's National Bureau for Migration and Refugees, a rights-focused association of civil organizations, told CNN on Sunday the deportation of over 1,000 people a day would prevent individual cases from being taken into account.
"We understand that the government has every right to deport people who are in its territory without papers, but this right has a limit," he said.
In the United States presidential candidate Donald Trump has also pledged mass deportations and has made false assertions about Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio.
(Reporting by Sarah Morland in Mexico City, Paul Mathieson in Santo Domingo and Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
