PORT PRINCE: Beltha Desir wanders aimlessly around the front of the school where she has taken refuge, holding tight to her 10-month-old child, the only family member with whom she was deported.

Desir, a Haitian woman, had lived for 10 years in the Dominican Republic, but immigration officers arrested her a week ago and sent her to the border, along with her Dominican-born baby.

Since June 17, when a registration programme for undocumented migrants ran out in the Dominican Republic, more than 17,000 people have poured across the border into Haiti, although the Dominicans insist those who have left did so voluntarily.

“They told me: ‘Go back to your country. Go find President Michel Martelly, we have no more need for Haitians. Whether you have papers or not, go home,’” she said.

She was detained in the city of Neyba where she worked, and didn’t have time to tell her husband, who works only 50 meters away.

“I have three children, but the two biggest are with their father. They are five and six. How can they understand I am no longer with them?” she asked, with tears welling up in her eyes. Disoriented, she said she can hardly sleep.

“It’s been six days since I have seen my children and husband. He does not even know I’m here in Haiti. I couldn’t even speak with him because he doesn’t have a telephone,” she said.Repeating just one of the racist insults she suffered during the journey to the border, she said authorities told her “that Dominicans are of a different blood, and that I should go and find my blood in Haiti. “Beside her is Rose Hippolyte, who has suffered the same discrimination”.

When they see a Haitian, the Dominicans say ‘Look at that pig, that Haitian devil,’” said Hippolyte, whose face is worn by years of work in the sugarcane fields.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2015

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