Thousands Woke Up At Risk Of Deportation In The Dominican Republic. Almost All Of Them Are Black.

Reporter II June 20, 2015

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People walk carrying signs and the Haitian flag during a silent march commemorating the fifth anniversary of a devastating earthquake that struck Haiti, Monday, Jan. 12, 2015, in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in 2010, and the Haitian government has said more than 300,000 people were killed. The exact toll is unknown because there was no systematic effort to count bodies among the chaos and destruction. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Haitian Jaquenol Martinez shows a card that proves that he has worked in the Dominican sugar cane fields since 1963, while trying to apply for a temporary resident permit, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Monday, June 15, 2015. Hundreds of Haitians are waiting in long lines throughout the Dominican Republic trying to secure legal residency as they face the threat of deportation. The government has given non-citizens until Tuesday to register under an initiative aimed at regulating the flow of migrants from neighboring Haiti. (AP Photo/Ezequiel Abiu Lopez) — Haitian Jaquenol Martinez shows a card that proves that he has worked in the Dominican sugar cane fields since 1963, while trying to apply for a temporary resident permit, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Monday, June 15, 2015. (AP Photo/Ezequiel Abiu Lopez)

Roque Planas, Julia Craven, THE HUFFINGTON POST

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (The Huffington Post) — At 74, Yampié Calleins’ yellowing, muscular hands now tremble when raising something as light as a piece of paper — the result of a life spent swinging a machete and hoisting cane in this country’s sugar fields. After devoting more than four decades of his labor to the Dominican sugar industry, he now draws a modest pension equal to roughly $110 per month. Tomorrow, however, he could lose it.

“I’ve been here since three in the morning,” Calleins told The Huffington Post. “But you’ve got to do what you can to get the papers.”

On Wednesday, Calleins was one of hundreds of people who had queued up since the early morning hours at the central administrative building here — virtually all of them Haitian-born or -descended, virtually all of them black and virtually all of them facing the threat of deportation in the coming days. At midnight, the deadline to file paperwork with a “Regularization Plan” for the Dominican Republic’s estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants expired, leaving an uncertain future for many on the island who have wrestled with Dominican bureaucracy for a chance to stay in the place they know as home.

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