The Army has detained 20 Haitians in a community in Montecristi who had crossed the border illegally and were waiting for nightfall to move towards Santiago. Sixteen of the group was male and four female, including five minors.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the year 2017 saw an explosion in the numbers of Haitians crossing the border illegally with 195,000 having been arrested and returned to Haiti. In previous years the figure was around 50,000 per year. An editorial in Diario Libre highlights that the 195,000 deportees number means the authorities are not doing their job on the border. The number is only those who were detained and sent back, and does not include those who were not detected.
In the first five days of 2018, more than a thousand Haitians have been detained in the border region trying to cross into the Dominican Republic.
Read more in Spanish:
El Dia
Diario Libre
9 January 2018
