Manufactured Statelessness and Deportations of Haitians in the Dominican Republic

By: Karma Elbadawy

Edited by: Chloe Pesqueira

Photo by PBS News

In 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic issued Judgement TC/0168/13, which retroactively reinterpreted the country’s nationality law to exclude individuals born in the Dominican Republic to parents considered “in transit,” a category applied to Haitian migrant workers dating back to 1929. The ruling stripped Dominican nationality from tens of thousands of people of Haitian descent who had been born and raised in the country, many of whom had never lived elsewhere. Human rights organizations and legal experts estimate that this decision rendered between 130,000 and 200,000 individuals effectively stateless (Hunter & Reece, 2022).

In response to international criticism, the government promised to restore legal status to those affected by enacting Law 169-14 in 2014. In practice, however, the new law did not restore citizenship, but instead required many affected individuals to register as foreigners, often granting only temporary residence permits or identification cards that recognized them as non-nationals rather than restoring Dominican nationality. Others were excluded entirely due to missing records that the state itself had failed to issue or preserve (Hunter & Reece, 2022; Hannam, 2014). Rather than resolving the consequences of the ruling, these measures entrenched a system of legal limbo in which access to nationality remained precarious.

Over the past decade, denationalization has coincided with a sharp escalation in deportations, with tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent deported each year (RFK Human Rights Center, 2024). Reports describe workplace and street raids, detentions without individualized assessment, and expulsions that overlook distinctions between undocumented migrants and Dominican-born residents lacking proof of nationality (New York Times, 2024). Media and human rights reporting suggest that race and suspected Haitian ancestry frequently shape enforcement decisions, with Blackness often functioning as an informal marker of deportability (Amnesty International, 2025). This racialization of enforcement blurs distinctions between legal status and identity, exposing even Dominican-born and documented individuals to detention and deportation based on appearance rather than law. Together, these developments reflect a broader shift in which citizenship itself has become an instrument of migration control.

The large-scale production of statelessness in the Dominican Republic raises serious concerns under international and regional human rights law. Under international human rights law, nationality is recognized as a fundamental right, and the arbitrary deprivation of nationality, particularly when it results in statelessness, is prohibited under Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has affirmed that states may not retroactively strip citizenship in ways that deny individuals access to legal protections or essential rights, most notably in Yean and Bosico Children v. Dominican Republic (2005).

Despite these norms, the Dominican Republic has perpetuated de facto statelessness through retroactive legal reinterpretation and administrative obstruction. Legal scholars argue that documentation loss acts as a form of bureaucratic violence: without birth certificates or identity cards, individuals are unable to enroll in school, enter formal employment, access public health services, or challenge detention or deportation through the courts (Mejia, 2015). People of Haitian descent, including those with valid documentation, avoid hospitals, public transportation, and workplaces out of fear of immigration raids (Amnesty International, 2025). The RFK Human Rights Center has documented cases in which Dominican-born individuals were detained and expelled to Haiti despite never having lived there, often without access to legal counsel or meaningful review of their nationality claims. Such practices raise serious due process and non-discrimination concerns, underscoring how denationalization and deportation operate together to erode fundamental protections.

Denationalization and deportation in the Dominican Republic are political tools shaped by a combination of nationalism, anti-Haitian sentiment, and economic pressures. Anti-Haitianism has historically been a part of Dominican national identity for many, with Blackness and Haitian ancestry framed as foreign and threatening (Sagás & Román, 2017). Thus, the 2013 Constitutional Tribunal ruling did not emerge in a vacuum, but rather reflected decades of political discourse portraying Haitian migration as incompatible with Dominican sovereignty and cultural cohesion (Baluarte, 2017).

Economic factors further drive the agenda. Despite the fact that the Dominican economy remains heavily dependent on Haitian labor, particularly in construction, agriculture, and the service sector, inflation, unemployment, and fiscal strain have heightened public resentment. As a result, political leaders have leveraged migration enforcement to signal control, even as deportations disrupt industries that rely on migrant labor (New York Times, 2024).

Deportation campaigns also function as a form of political diversion. Large-scale enforcement operations, border militarization, and raids signal government authority and deflect attention from domestic concerns such as inequality and corruption. Migration operations often intensify during moments of political pressure, reinforcing the idea that enforcement is driven as much by domestic politics as by immigration management (The Guardian, 2025). In this context, denationalization and deportation operate not only as legal measures but as tools of nationalist governance that convert racialized exclusion into political capital.

The Dominican Republic’s statelessness and deportation crisis is not a result of a lack of legal frameworks, but from the deliberate narrowing of nationality protections and the weaponization of documentation. Addressing these issues requires a shift away from discretionary enforcement towards rights-based governance.

First, the Dominican government should restore birthright nationality protections for individuals born on Dominican soil prior to the 2013 ruling, which is in line with the constitutional guarantees that were in effect at the time of their birth. At a minimum, individuals previously recognized as Dominican nationals should not be required to reapply for citizenship through migration and naturalization procedures that presume foreignness.

Second, authorities should immediately suspend deportations of individuals who lack proof of nationality or whose claims are unresolved, particularly where documentation gaps result from failures of the civil registry. Deportation carried out in the absence of individualized nationality determinations risks expelling Dominican-born persons and perpetuating statelessness in violation of regional human rights obligations.

Third, the Dominican Republic should establish an independent nationality review, with the help of domestic civil society members and international observers. Comparable nationality recognition processes have been used in Kenya, often carried out with support from civil society organizations and UNHCR, and have enabled formerly stateless communities to obtain formal recognition as citizens (UNHCR, 2017). This would help to adjudicate denationalization cases transparently and provide binding decisions, reducing arbitrariness while restoring confidence in civil documentation systems.

Lastly, the government should partner with the UNHCR, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and regional bodies to develop a statelessness-reduction framework focused on universal birth registration, civil registry reform, and protection from discriminatory enforcement. Without structural reform, continued use of deportations will deepen legal insecurity rather than resolve migration challenges.

The Dominican Republic’s denationalization and deportation agenda highlights how statelessness can be manufactured through law, bureaucracy, and enforcement. By retroactively redefining citizenship, obstructing access to documentation, and accelerating deportations without individual safeguards, nationality has been transformed from a source of protection into a mechanism of exclusion. These policies have not resolved migration pressures or strengthened governance. Instead, they have entrenched legal insecurity for tens of thousands of people born and raised in the Dominican Republic.

The Dominican Republic acts as a broader warning for international human rights systems: when citizenship becomes conditional, and documentation is weaponized, entire populations can be considered deportable. Without meaningful restoration of nationality protections and limits on coercive enforcement, the Dominican Republic risks perpetuating a cycle of statelessness that undermines both regional human rights norms and domestic social cohesion.

The views expressed in this publication are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Rice Journal of Public Policy, its staff, or its Editorial Board.

---

References

Amnesty International. “República Dominicana: La lucha contra el racismo debe ser respetada y protegida por las autoridades.” Amnesty International, 2025, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/03/republica-dominicana-la-lucha-contra-el-racismo-debe-ser-respetada-y-protegida-por-las-autoridades/.

Baluarte, David C. “The Risk of Statelessness: Reasserting a Rule for the Protection of the Right to Nationality.” Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, vol. 19, 2017, pp. 47–92.

Hannam, Monique A. “Soy Dominicano – The Status of Haitian Descendants Born in the Dominican Republic and Measures to Protect Their Right to a Nationality.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 47, no. 4, Oct. 2014, pp. 1123–1166.

Hunter, Wendy, and Francesca Reece. “Denationalization in the Dominican Republic: Trapping Victims in the State’s Administrative Maze.” Latin American Research Review, vol. 57, 2022, pp. 590–607, doi:10.1017/lar.2022.48. 

Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, Series C No. 130, 8 September 2005, https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_130%20ing.pdf. 

Mejia, Nicia C. “Dominican Apartheid: Inside the Flawed Migration System of the Dominican Republic.” Harvard Latino Law Review, vol. 18, 2015, pp. 201–230.

New York Times. “Haiti Migrants Are Rounded Up in Cage Trucks in the Dominican Republic.” The New York Times, 9 Dec. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/world/americas/haiti-dominican-republican-cage-trucks.html.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. “Stateless and Vulnerable: The Ongoing Crisis of Haitian Descent in the Dominican Republic.” RFK Human Rights, rfkhumanrights.org/our-voices/stateless-and-vulnerable-the-ongoing-crisis-of-haitian-descent-in-the-dominican-republic/. 

Sagás, Ernesto, and Ediberto Román. “Who Belongs? Citizenship and Statelessness in the Dominican Republic.” FIU Legal Studies Research Paper Series, no. 20-17, Sept. 2020, Social Science Research Network, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3698414.

The Guardian. “‘They Grabbed Us Like Dogs’: Deportation Quotas Tear Haitian Migrants’ Lives Apart.” The Guardian, 7 Sept. 2025, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/07/they-grabbed-us-like-dogs-deportation-quotas-tear-haitian-migrants-lives-apart.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Kenya Ends Statelessness for Makonde Community.” UNHCR, 2016, https://www.unhcr.org/ke/news/makonde-statelessness-citizenship-kenya.