Dominican Republic agrees to accept limited third-country deportees from U.S. plans

The Dominican Republic has agreed to accept a limited number of third-country deportees from the United States, reversing President Luis Abinader’s previous refusal to take people from any country other than its own citizens. The move marks a sharp shift for a government that last year said it would accept “only Dominicans, who we have the duty and the right to do so.”

The Dominican foreign ministry said it signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding with the United States under the Trump administration’s Shield of the Americas initiative. The arrangement allows the temporary and exceptional entry of third-country nationals into Dominican territory, but only people without criminal records. Haitians and unaccompanied minors are excluded, and the Dominican government said the deportees would be treated as “in transit” through the country, a status that Dominican law does not limit by time.

The government did not say how many people would arrive, describing the figure only as limited. The terms point to the wider strategy behind Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has sought to shift deportation burdens onto partner governments rather than keep removals within the United States alone. The Migration Policy Institute has said the Trump administration had signed third-country deportation agreements with 27 countries and planned outreach to at least 54 others, a sign that the Dominican deal fit into a much broader regional push.

That push carries heavy consequences in the Caribbean, especially for Haiti and for migrants who already move through the Dominican Republic under severe pressure. Reporting cited in the research notes says the Dominican Republic deported nearly 380,000 Haitians last year, and more than 200,000 undocumented migrants left the country in the first months of 2025, including at least 145,000 Haitians. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have criticized Abinader’s migration policies as discriminatory, while Dominican officials have defended them as an assertion of sovereignty.

Bernardo Vega, a Dominican economist and former ambassador to the United States, called the new deal “bad news” in a television interview and said it reflected pressure from Washington. The agreement also adds the Dominican Republic to a growing regional pattern that has already sent third-country deportees to places such as El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama, where the practice has drawn legal and human-rights scrutiny.