By EFE
The Dominican Republic acknowledged on Friday that it has begun to deport pregnant Haitian women, a controversial decision that is part of a package of measures announced to curb immigration from the neighboring country.
The repatriations of Haitian pregnant women total "hundreds" since the deportations began on Tuesday, as revealed this Friday by the head of the General Directorate of Migration (DGM), Enrique García.
The controversial measure, which was taken due to the saturation of Dominican hospitals, is adopted at a time of turbulent political crisis and violence in Haiti.
Immigrant families from Haiti climb a steep mountain trail near the Panamanian border on October 19, 2021 through the Darien Gap, Colombia.John Moore / Getty Images
The Government's arguments
The Minister of the Interior and Police, Jesús Vásquez, argued that the country cannot cope with the medical cost of caring for these women, who account for 30% of deliveries in Dominican public hospitals, according to data from the National Health System ( SNS) updated until October.
In the same vein, the Minister of Health, Daniel Rivera, called a press conference to explain the situation of the country's maternity wards,
whose capacity cannot support the increase in Haitian women who are going to give birth.
Currently, there are 100 births of Haitian mothers per day, which represents about 30% of births in the Dominican Republic, a percentage that has been increasing gradually from 12.5% registered in 2018, he explained.
54 Haitians rescued from a trailer in Guatemala.
There were 14 minors
Nov. 2, 202100: 30
If the trend continues to increase, it is projected that in 2022 40% of deliveries will correspond to pregnant women from the neighboring country, whether or not they are residents of the Dominican Republic.
This means that "Dominican women have to migrate to the private sector" because obstetric places are limited, a limitation increased by the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.
Buses full of pregnant women
Members of various civil society organizations, both from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, witnessed how these women are deported, after participating in a meeting of the Cross-Border Dialogue Table held on Thursday in the municipality of Comendador on the border.
[What must immigrants who receive notification from ICE do to appear in court?]
The general coordinator of the Southern Border Foundation, Pedro Cano, told Efe that they saw two DGM buses arrive with people they were going to deport.
A Haitian man denounces that an immigration agent from Mexico caused an abortion on his wife after being beaten
Oct. 14, 202101: 26
With "disbelief" and "stupor", they observed that "43 women were going down in different stages of pregnancy, from three to eight or nine months" and even one person with both arms bandaged.
“The women came down, many of them, crying.
They did not bring large items or packages, some covered their faces "
“The women came down, many of them, crying.
They did not bring large belongings or packages, some covered their faces ”and, those who wanted to tell their case, said that they lived in Santo Domingo and that when they went to their routine check-up at the San Lorenzo de Los Mina Hospital and other centers they
had been intercepted and detained by the DGM and the Army.
"It is a drama, we do not know if they have left children, there is no investigation of the cases and there may be a break in the family bond," he said.
The measure against the laws
This practice
"is not regulation of migration, it is lacerating the most basic rights of the doubly vulnerable population"
due to their status as migrants and because they are people with limited resources, Cano said.
In addition, as he pointed out, it
contravenes the Dominican Constitution itself,
the General Health Law, as well as various international treaties and agreements freely signed by the country, and an administrative resolution "cannot be above" those norms.
[They capture a gang of human traffickers that operated on the border of El Salvador and Guatemala]
The Dominican Migration Law empowers the DGM to carry out automatic deportations of any immigrant in an irregular condition, but the regulation that regulates this law prohibits the detention of pregnant women.
The ordeal of this Latin mother who was separated from her daughters and has not been able to see them again
Nov. 12, 202101: 42
Similarly, the Dominican Republic promised to avoid the separation of families in a memorandum of understanding signed with Haiti in 1999 to regulate repatriation mechanisms.
With the measures adopted, public hospitals will only treat undocumented foreigners in cases of medical emergency and pregnant women of more than six months will be prohibited from entering the country if they do not have the corresponding medical insurance.