In the Dominican Republic, batey slums housing sugarcane workers from Haiti fear immigration raids and extortion
O
n the yellow bus rumbling through the Dominican Republic’s sugarcane fields back to the settlement, Sainristil sat among the jolting bodies of other Haitian workers in ripped orange shirts. These journeys are routine – always the same grumbling stomachs in anticipation of dinner, the same chatter among men who share a job, a home and a homeland.
But that evening, as the workers’ bus pulled into the cul-de-sac of communal housing, it came to a halt before two white buses marked with the words “Migration control”.
“They grabbed us like dogs,” says Sainristil, referring to the 3 July raid in Construcción, where uniformed men bundled 11 of the workers into the vehicles so they could be deported. Construcción is a batey, one of the Dominican informal sugarcane settlements that have long been safe zones for Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent.
