Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06SANTODOMINGO1349
2006-04-21 20:00:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Embassy Santo Domingo
Cable title:  

CRIMINAL DEPORTEES: DOMINICAN OFFICIALS AND

Tags:  CVIS DR KCRM PGOV PREL SNAR 
pdf how-to read a cable
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ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 212000Z APR 06
FM AMEMBASSY SANTO DOMINGO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4477
INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHWN/AMEMBASSY BRIDGETOWN PRIORITY 1889
RUEHKG/AMEMBASSY KINGSTON PRIORITY 2554
RUEHPO/AMEMBASSY PARAMARIBO PRIORITY 0977
RUEHPU/AMEMBASSY PORT AU PRINCE PRIORITY 4208
RUEHSP/AMEMBASSY PORT OF SPAIN PRIORITY 1642
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC PRIORITY
RUCNFB/FBI WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEAHLC/HQS DHS WASHDC PRIORITY
RUCOWCV/CUSTOMS CARIBBEAN ATTACHE MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RUMISTA/CDR USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK PRIORITY 0067
UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 001349 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR SEARBY;
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: CVIS DR KCRM PGOV PREL SNAR
SUBJECT: CRIMINAL DEPORTEES: DOMINICAN OFFICIALS AND
ANALYSTS DON'T BLAME THE UNITED STATES


UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 001349

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR SEARBY;
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: CVIS DR KCRM PGOV PREL SNAR
SUBJECT: CRIMINAL DEPORTEES: DOMINICAN OFFICIALS AND
ANALYSTS DON'T BLAME THE UNITED STATES



1. Dominican PermRep to the UN Erasmo Lara-Pena has been
energetically promoting the idea of a program of social
services and support for Dominicans who are deported from the
United States after serving time in U.S. jails. He published
a lengthy proposal in daily "Hoy" on March 11. On March 24
President Fernandez's foundation FUNGLODE organized a
full-day high-level seminar on forced repatriations, at which
the focus was not U.S. migration policy or deportations but
rather the social stigma and lack of services for Dominican
ex-convicts finding themselves abruptly in their country of
origin. Presenters concluded without exception that Dominican
criminal deportees posed little danger to Dominican society.



2. The event was conspicuously blue-ribbon, including
Lara-Pena, Dominican ambassador to the United States Flavio
Dario Espinal, Deputy FM Alejandra Liriano, and Deputy
Attorney General Frank Soto. Various discussants called for
a campaign to alert Dominicans in the United States of the
advantages of U.S. naturalization, suggested a strategic
alliance with the Dominican diaspora in the United States,
and even imagined a deal in which Dominican authorities could
incarcerate U.S.-convicted Dominicans here at lower cost to
the U.S. federal and state authorities.


3. FUNGLODE General Director Federic Emam-Zade opened the
sessions by emphasizing that the issue of rising crime rates
was regional, affecting not only the Dominican Republic, but
also Puerto Rico and the whole of Central America. He
characterized the repatriated as largely nacro-criminal
convicts with little hope of full social reintegration
because of discrimination and the stigma associated with
deportee status. He said that approximately 5,500 Dominicans
were currently incarcerated in the United States.


4. FUNGLODE Projects Director Maria Elizabeth Rodriguez said
a principal focus of the Fernandez administration is to
establish a strategic alliance with the Dominican diaspora.
Noting the already close ties between Dominicans in the
United States and those still in the Dominican Republic,

Rodriguez asked rhetorically, "Shouldn't give our brothers a
second opportunity?"


5. The spokesman from a newly established non-governmental
organization, "Bienvenido Seas" ("Welcome, Friend"),said
that as a deportee from the United States, he bore no ill
will either toward the U.S. government or toward the people
of the United States. "What is critical," he clared, "is
the just, constitutional principle that no one should be
judged twice for the same crime. These individuals have paid
their debt, and they need a structure upon their return." He
suggested job programs or halfway houses and said that

deportees often have received training while in U.S. custody,
both vocational and English language classes.



6. Dominican Ambassador to the United States Flavio Dario
Espinal, a former university law school dean, was more
cautious, noting that it is not clear if crime rates are
related to returning deportees. He said that approximately
two-thirds of Dominican deportees had been convicts and said
that it was in the interest of both governments to understand
the frequency of criminal activity. He encorsed
U.S.-Dominican law enforcement cooperation and stressed that
issues surrounding deportees are complex and not easily
resolved. Espinal said that for the five fears ending in
2005, the Dominican Republic received the fourth highest
number of deportees (20,000),behind Hondouras (37,000),
Guatemala (35,000),and El Salvador (30,000). (He left out
entirely Mexico, the leader by far.)


7. Former Fulbright scholar Nina Siulc (author of "Unwelcome
Citixens: The Deporation of Dominicans with Criminal

Convictions") said Dominicans in the United States were
victims of a particularly punitive judicial system. U.S. per
capita incarceration statistics are the highest in the world,
she commented, and for narcotics offenses African-Americans
and Latinos are disproportionately represented, particularly
the poorest and least-educated. Her close study of
approximately 500 Dominican deportees suggested to Siulc
noted that the majority are not career criminals, but rather
drug offenders usually convicted for possession and sale,
then deported after their first conviction. The majority had
grown up in the United States and identified more closely
identify with U.S. culture and society than with the
Dominican Republic. They took advantage of the perceived
liberty of conduct in the country, and the majority had no
idea that their criminal activity could result in
deportation. Siulc said that the deportation issue was
particularly difficult for former Legal Permanent Residents
(LPRs). She said that compared with other immigrant groups,
few Dominicans seek naturalization as the alternative to LPR
status. When deportees arrive in the Dominican Republic they
are seen as "bastard children," without access to rights or
even police protection. Because of their identification with
the United States and their rejection here, approximately
one-third will seek to re-enter the United States illegally.
(Embassy brought Siulc together with leading journalists
later that afternoon, resulting in the apprearance in local
papers of several well-informed commentaries on the situation
of deportees, emphasizing that they played little role in
Dominican domestic crime.)


8. Other commentators were variously helpful, hopeful, or
irrelevant. Santo Domingo District Attorney Jose Manuel
Hernandez asserted that criminal defendants in the United
States are commonly refused attorneys. Given the questions
about those individuals, Hernandez supported reintegration
but called at the same time for a new program authorizing
possible preventative detention, intensive investigation, and
supervision of deportees. He suggested a bilateral agreement
whereby the Dominicans might agree to incarcerate their own
nationals, as a service to the high-cost U.S. prison system,
in return for payment.


9. Deputy Attorney General Frank Soto emphatically denied
that deportees were a factor in the complex phenomenon of
crime, which he findsmore linked with the development of
narcotics trafficking. The National Police representative
acknowledged a complete absence of police records of
returnees prior to 1995 and an inoperative fingerprint
system, incapable of tracking the criminal activities of
recent returnees. He said that the police do follow the
fortunes of returnees, and that those who complete a
six-month follow-up without recidivism can obtain the police
"certificate of good conduct" required by prospective
employers. In one dramatic moment in mid-morning a deportee
took the floor: "I won a silver medal in sports competitions
in Mexico; but because I was deported from the United States
in 1995, no one will employ me. I am left idle, to live from
the earnings of my wife and children. Can't anyone offer me
a job?" An embarrassed silence followed.

10. Hector Cheisa, Director of Prisons for the State of New
York described vocational programs for convicted criminals,
including those eventually to be deported, to provide them
employment skills for use upon their release or transfer.
Cheisa noted New York State programs for drug and alcohol
treatment as examples of programming to challenge the root
causes of delinquency. He responded to complaints from
Dominican consulate personnel about access by explaining that
after finishing sentences in the state system, deportees are
usually moved away from New York to Federal holding centers
elsewhere. New York Consulate representative Francisco
Fernandez suggested that the deportees, English-language
skills might offer them eventual employment as English
teachers.




11. Embassy economic and political counselor outlined U.S.
migration policies, the system of administrative law that
rules on deportations, and offered statistics on Dominican
cases considered, in comparison to those of other
nationalities. He noted that in 2005, when just over 2,000
Dominicans were forcibly repatriated, the U.S. consulate
processed about 22,000 immigrant visas and 60,000 new
non-immigrant visas.
Comment.

12. The Dominican public is convinced that crime has been
rising dramatically over the last year or more, a perception
that is fed more by newspaper sensationalism and political
posturing than fact. The confused debate over the effects of
the 2004 change in the Criminal Procedures Code illustrates
the extent of misunderstanding, as does the yearning for a
"hard hand" ("mano dura") against crime. Last year the
Fernandez administration put additional police resources
into the "Safe Community" initiative in the tough Capotillo
neighborhood of the capital, and last week the President
inaugurated a similar initiative in an area of Santiago, the
country's second city. In these circumstances, Amb. Lara's
initiative, handsomely supported by FUNGLODE and well
attended by officials, has for the moment succeeded in
lifting from that debate the small population of repatriated
convicts. It was a useful step in reminding observers of the
administration's orientation toward social issues.

13. Dominicans in this seminar did not take the pugnacious,
complaining attitude on repatriations typical to the Caricom
states. Their comments implied that they continued to
regard the United States as a venue of opportunity for
Dominican migrants and they recognized that U.S.
administrative and judicial procedures are far from
arbitrary. With their own insistence on the government's
right to enforce migration laws against Haitian illegals, the
Dominican authorities would gain nothing from questioning
U.S. enforcement. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact
that at no point during this seminar did any Dominicans
mention the legislation on migration currently under
examination in the U.S. Congress, demonstrations in the
United States, or lobbying efforts by Latin American
governments, including their own. The focus remained
throughout on Dominicans returned to the home country because
of their infringement of laws abroad.


HERTELL