Employers steal the wages of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic

More and more Dominican employers are turning to immigration officers in order to withhold and steal the wages of undocumented Haitian workers

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When Charlensky Woodens Charles, an employee on a construction site run by the Bisonó company in Hato Nuevo, Dominican Republic, asked for his wages at the end of November 2025, his supervisor’s response was immediate: a threat to report him to migration authorities.

Frustrated and powerless, the 23-year-old told AyiboPost that he hurriedly left the construction site, forced to abandon a month’s salary estimated at 7,000 pesos (around 15,500 gourdes).

He spent the following month without resources, forced to go into debt to cover his expenses.

His situation reflects a broader trend.

According to around ten testimonies collected by AyiboPost, many undocumented Haitian workers in the construction and public works sector are forced to forfeit all or part of their wages at the end of their contracts, under pressure from blackmail by employers or site managers.

“Sometimes we are not paid at all, other times we are paid less than the amount agreed upon at the start. And when we protest, they threaten to call migration agents,” said Charles, originally from the Bel-Air neighborhood, who arrived in the neighboring country in June 2024 after fleeing violence in his area of residence.

The Dominican company mentioned was contacted through its website. This article will be updated if it responds.

The reality described in these workers’ testimonies persists in a context where Dominican authorities have intensified deportations of Haitian migrants since 2023. Since October 2025, 525,000 foreigners, mostly Haitians, have been deported to Haiti, according to Dominican authorities.

A tentative resumption of dialogue between the two countries was observed last month, after relations had broken down in 2023.

A pillar of the Dominican economy, the construction sector accounted for around 14 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2021, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The sector relies heavily on Haitian labor, estimated at nearly 95 percent, according to the organization.

Since at least 2013, international reports have denounced precarious working conditions and violations of workers’ rights in the Dominican Republic.

Several testimonies collected by AyiboPost mention suspicions of collusion between construction site managers and migration agents, fueling a constant climate of fear.

Roody, who has been living in Santiago de los Caballeros since December 2021, recalls a raid by migration agents on a construction site where he worked, during which most undocumented workers were arrested.

“I think the employer himself called immigration, because he owed us about a month and a half of wages, nearly 50,000 pesos,” the man said.

According to him, Haitian workers often carry a heavier workload on construction sites than their Dominican colleagues, “just to keep their jobs.”

On the site where he works, located in Primaveral, in the city of Bávaro, Roody describes a particularly precarious reality for Haitian migrants.

“They might pay you for two weeks of work, then make you work for free during the next two or three weeks,” explained the man, who says he sometimes works on credit, hoping to be paid later.

Without legal papers and lacking alternatives, Roody says he accepts these conditions despite the risk of accumulating several weeks of unpaid work in the end.

For Haitians, these violations are part of a long history dating back to the twentieth century.

Between 1952 and 1966, bilateral agreements regulated the entry of tens of thousands of workers, institutionalizing a cheap and poorly protected labor force.

After 1986, these mechanisms disappeared, but migration continued informally, under the control of smuggling networks.

In a study published in December 2025 on working conditions in the construction sector in the Dominican Republic, the Refugee Support and Research Group (GARR) documented practices such as opaque recruitment methods, discrimination, insults, physical assaults, and repeated violations of workplace rights against Haitian migrants.

The organization describes these practices as a “form of modern slavery.”

For Stenley Orbruth Doriscar, GARR’s communications officer, contacted by AyiboPost, this pattern of workers’ rights violations begins at the border.

Dominican employers seeking low-cost labor rely on smuggling networks to bring Haitian workers into the country irregularly, before subjecting them to these conditions.

The crossing can cost up to 15,000 Dominican pesos (around 35,000 gourdes) per person.

Added to this is a lack of knowledge of local laws, which further weakens these workers in relation to employers, according to Doriscar.

In some cases, tensions on construction sites escalate into extreme violence.

Jameson Antoine, who has twelve years of experience in construction across several regions of the country, described an incident that occurred in 2021 in Las Terrenas, where a Haitian worker demanding his wages was shot dead by a Dominican employer after an altercation.

“We saw him shoot him at point-blank range,” Antoine said, adding that he could not intervene because he feared for his own situation, since he himself did not have legal documents.

For many undocumented Haitian workers, this vulnerability extends far beyond construction sites.

Two Haitians living in the Dominican Republic say they were extorted by migration patrols.

One of them said he was forced to pay 12,000 pesos in July 2025 to secure his release after being detained by a patrol in the Bávaro area.

Data published by the Dominican National Statistics Office as part of a national report on immigrants, released in 2017, highlights the precarious situation of Haitian workers compared to immigrants of other nationalities.

Only 5 percent of Haitian immigrants — the country’s main migrant population — benefited from labor protection, 7 percent from health insurance, and 3.6 percent from a pension fund.

Meanwhile, their average income stood at 14,092 Dominican pesos, compared to 33,205 pesos for immigrants from other backgrounds.

On construction sites, working conditions further deepen this vulnerability.

According to Stenley Orbruth Doriscar, Haitian laborers, assigned to physically demanding tasks, often work without adequate protective equipment.

When such equipment is available, workers frequently have to pay for it themselves or have its cost deducted from their wages.

The phenomenon of intentional wage withholding extends beyond the construction sector.

Étienne Junior Moïse, who entered the Dominican Republic illegally in 2023, said he received 2,000 pesos — instead of the 20,000 pesos initially agreed upon — for three months of work at a bakery called Panadería Wascar, located in Hato Nuevo, in the municipality of Santo Domingo Oeste.

The company was contacted. This article will be updated if it responds.

Contacted by email on April 30, 2026, by AyiboPost, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to our requests for comment. Also contacted by email on May 13, 2026, the Embassy of Haiti in the Dominican Republic has still not responded to our requests for comment.

By : Lucnise Duquereste & Djouly Mombrun

Cover | A Haitian worker gathers cut sugarcane to load it onto carts in a private field near Santa Fe, in San Pedro de Macorís. The harvested sugarcane is also transported to the Central Romana factory, May 27, 2021. Photo: Pierre Michel Jean

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