A few weeks ago, I observed that Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” comes across like a beat cop playing a military general without having to do so under enemy fire. Listening to him, you’d think he was gearing up for war with Russia, not rounding up scared immigrants like a farmer herding cattle.
The Dominican Republic’s blueprint
Well, it turns out the Dominican Republic (DR) is already doing exactly what the incoming Trump administration is threatening to do. Here’s how The New York Times captured the chilling reality of this island nation herding migrants like cattle for deportation:
Desperate Haitians who fled to the Dominican Republic are being sent back in cages. … Cage-like trucks fitted with iron bars that appear designed to carry livestock line up every morning at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. … Since October, more than 71,000 people have been deported to Haiti.
The DR’s dehumanizing operation offers both a logistical playbook and political cover for Trump’s deportation agenda.
Mass deportation: the legal and logistical challenges
Trump has promised to deport 11 to 15 million people, including US-born children of undocumented immigrants. But his bluster rarely matches his follow-through. After all, he vowed in 2016 to build a wall across the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. But he ended up building less than 10 percent of that wall — and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.
More to the point, non-refoulement and the Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit deporting people to countries where they face persecution, torture, or death, especially during conflict. And most US migrants could make a credible case that deportation would expose them to such risks. Perhaps that’s why Trump’s team is scrambling to find third-party nations willing to accept Haitian migrants. So far, they’ve failed. Even The Bahamas — already overwhelmed with its own Haitian deportation crisis — has refused.
Trump could make countries an offer they can’t refuse
Of course, Trump has no qualms about playing hardball, as NATO countries can attest. So don’t be surprised if frustration pushes him to ban all flights from countries refusing to accept deportees, especially their own citizens. To drive the point home, he might even include private planes ferrying the wives of political elites coming to America to shop. Trust me, faced with that prospect, Bahamian politicians wouldn’t hesitate to do Trump’s bidding…
Ultimately, the Dominican Republic’s actions lay bare the horrifying reality of mass deportations. They’re a stark warning of the brutality the US could unleash if it follows through with a plan targeting 1,000 times as many migrants. But the real question isn’t whether these deportations violate international law—they do. It’s whether they so deeply offend all notions of humanity that they spark sustained public protests.
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