Dominican Republic, Haiti Pledge Closer Border Ties — What That Actually Means As Deportations Hit Record Pace

A New Foreign Minister’s First Big Test at the Border

Thursday’s meeting carried extra weight for one simple reason: Víctor “Ito” Bisonó had been the Dominican Republic’s top diplomat for barely three weeks. President Luis Abinader named Bisonó foreign minister in mid-August, moving him over from the housing ministry after Roberto Álvarez stepped down following six years running the Foreign Ministry (MIREX). The Dajabón trip put the new chancellor face to face with Haiti’s Raina Forbin at CODEVI, a free-trade zone straddling the frontier between Dajabón province and Haiti’s Ouanaminthe commune — a site that has long stood in for the economic ties binding the two nations that share Hispaniola.

Delegations from both foreign ministries spent the day working through a familiar list: border security, migration management, formal trade, consular services and air connectivity.

What Was Agreed — and What Wasn’t

According to the joint declaration issued by MIREX, the two governments committed to “strengthen the mechanisms of cooperation” for better governance of border security and migration, framing the talks explicitly around mutual respect for sovereignty. Both sides also agreed to keep pushing internationally for the full deployment of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) — the UN-backed mission authorized under Security Council Resolution 2793 in September 2025 as the successor to the earlier multinational police mission in Haiti — along with a renewed mandate for it at the UN Security Council.

Notably absent: any new treaty. As Diario Libre reported, the delegations instead committed to keeping dialogue channels open, and separately discussed reopening Dominican consular operations inside Haiti once security conditions allow. Bisonó summarized the tone afterward, saying, “We are aligned on the decisions we need to make to strengthen our relationship.” A parallel conversation with business leaders focused on formalizing cross-border trade and job creation.

The Deportation Numbers Behind the Diplomacy

The overture comes at an awkward moment for Dominican migration policy. Dominican authorities deported 250,429 Haitian nationals between January and July 2026 — a 16.2% increase over the 215,463 removed in the same stretch of 2025 — according to Directorate General of Migration (DGM) figures reported by EFE. That pace works out to roughly 1,000 removals a day, part of the mass-deportation drive President Abinader launched in October 2024, when he said undocumented Haitian migration had become a “burden” the country could no longer sustain.

August pushed the numbers higher still. DGM logged 35,276 Haitian deportations that month — the highest single-month total so far this year — with the largest shares processed through the Haina center and the Dajabón and Elías Piña border crossings. Measured a different way, DGM’s own running tally puts total nationwide deportations at roughly 670,500 since the October 2024 order began, a figure that reflects the country’s overall enforcement effort rather than any single border crossing.

Rights monitors have tracked a human cost behind the totals. Haiti’s Groupe d’Appui aux Rapatriés et Réfugiés (GARR) has reported that pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and unaccompanied minors made up a meaningful share of the roughly 22,000 people deported in February alone, and the International Organization for Migration has repeatedly pressed the Dominican government to slow the pace given the collapse of basic services across Haiti.

Washington Heights: Divided Over the Border

For Dominican-Americans in Manhattan’s Washington Heights — a neighborhood the U.S. federal government formally listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Dominican Historic District in early 2025 — the story lands close to home. Many residents still have family split across both sides of the DR-Haiti border.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, whose 13th Congressional District includes Washington Heights, has taken a notably different line than most international rights groups. Speaking at a Bronx Dominican Parade event, Espaillat argued that “the Dominican Republic has the right to protect its border,” pointing to gang violence spilling over from Haiti and saying Abinader has an obligation to keep Dominicans safe. That remark predates this week’s meeting by more than a year, but his office has staked out that position consistently since.

That stance mirrors a broader divide inside the diaspora — between residents who back tougher enforcement and those who see echoes of shared Haitian-Dominican family ties and labor history, or their own relatives’ immigration struggles in the U.S. Washington Heights’ Dominican population has been dispersing toward New Jersey and the Bronx as rents rise, even as the neighborhood remains a symbolic anchor for a community that numbered well over 150,000 Manhattan residents at its peak.

What Comes Next

Neither government set a date for a follow-up meeting, and Thursday’s talks produced commitments rather than enforceable rules. Whether the language from CODEVI eventually translates into slower deportation numbers, more humane processing at crossings like Dajabón, or simply another round of diplomatic meetings remains genuinely open — a question that will keep drawing attention from a Dominican-American electorate in New York with direct family stakes on both sides of the story.