The director of the Department of Migration, Carlos Amarante Baret said that his predecessors had operated an illicit operation to facilitate irregular travel to Spain, the United States, and Canada. Interested parties were charged between US$10,000 and US$15,000 per person, as reported in the Listin Diario. According to Amarante, a lawyer himself, the illicit traffic was promoted within the department using military coordinators who were the real chiefs of immigration controls at the nation’s airports. At the same time, the official said that the section that took care of foreigner’s residence permits had become a center for extorting money, and made between three and four million pesos each month to irregularly legalize foreigners’ residence status.
He told the Listin Diario that former officials sold illegal residence permits to Chinese and Indian citizens, several of which have been stopped at local airports. Recently three brothers from India were stopped with fake residence permits as they tried to enter the country for the first time and a week before two Chinese had been caught with irregularly issued papers.
Amarante told reporters during his visit to the newspaper that migration officials at the ports and airports of the country were under pressure from military personnel that participated in the “illegal human traffic.” He admitted that it would be difficult to prove that the military had operated without the fore knowledge of the migration officials.
Amarante announced that working together with the Attorney General he and his staff would be creating an office just to deal with the white slave traffic that operates in the country. He warned that his team of investigators would remove any person linked to white slavery from the Dominican Republic.