These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
Basis: the Dominican Government’s own communiqué of 12 May 2026 and the foreign ministry’s statement of the following day, both read in Spanish; the depositary record and the Committee against Torture’s own agenda papers; the United Nations refugee agency’s published procedure and its decision figures; and a monitoring project’s account of an instrument neither government has published. No one has been sent. The designation rests on what the receiving state has said in advance about what will happen to anyone who is.
Transferred people “will not enter the Dominican migration system, nor will applications for refuge in the Dominican Republic be accepted”. The Foreign Minister said the same day that the agreement “does not contemplate applications for refuge or regularisation in the Dominican Republic”. The communiqué of the previous day describes return to the country of origin, with the United States paying. A receiving state has said in advance that it will not hear a protection claim.
Third Country Deportation Watch says the memorandum provides that the Dominican Republic intends to evaluate claims for refugee status, asylum or other protection from transferred people, and to do so without regard to whether protection could have been sought in the United States. That is the opposite of what the ministry said three days earlier. The Coalition publishes both and resolves neither, because no government has published the text and the two accounts cannot be checked against it. That is the strongest argument on this page for publication.
The Dominican Republic’s initial report fell due on 23 February 2013 and has never been submitted. Fourteen years a party and never once reviewed: no dialogue, no concluding observations, no document. It has made no declaration under article 22, so no individual may petition the Committee, and it is not a party to the Optional Protocol, so no body may visit its places of detention. No United Nations anti-torture mechanism can either hear from a person held there or go and look.
The published procedure requires an application within fifteen days of arrival, with a medical certificate, six photographs and a written testimony, at an office whose address two current official sources give differently. The stay described by the receiving government is days, reported as roughly seven to fifteen. Across the three years in which the State’s own procedure decided anything at all, it decided sixty-eight cases and recognised fifteen people.
The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.
On 12 May 2026 the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding under a bilateral initiative the Dominican Government calls Escudo de las Américas. It is expressly non-binding and terminable at any time by either side. Nobody has been sent. One hundred and twenty-two days passed between signature and the compiling of this page, a window in which the stated ceiling would have allowed about a hundred and twenty people.
Arrangement. A memorandum of understanding, signed 12 May 2026, between the Government of the Dominican Republic through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government of the United States. No title has been published by anyone. Neither government has published the text. It is not a scanned image nobody has transcribed, which is the position for several instruments in this series; it is simply absent.
Terms, as stated publicly rather than read. Up to about thirty people a month, for one year. Excluded: Haitian nationals, unaccompanied minors, and people with criminal records. The United States provides financial and operational support. The International Organization for Migration is the implementing partner.
Transferred. None recorded. Third Country Deportation Watch, page last updated 21 August 2026, records “None known to have occurred” and no known United States litigation. The United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants tracker, last updated July 2026, does not list the Dominican Republic at all. Dominican reporting on 1 June 2026 recorded that no arrivals had taken place, that officials could not say when transfers would begin, that they had received no official notification, and that the silence persisted.
Federal Register. Nothing. Every other country in this series with a published arrangement has a notice. Three separate searches returned none for the Dominican Republic.
Domestic approval. None. The memorandum was not sent to the National Congress, on the Government’s position that a non-binding instrument does not require it. Senators were reported on 13 May as not knowing the details of the agreement.
The communiqué of 12 May 2026 describes a memorandum “of a non-binding character, directed at the temporary and exceptional entry into Dominican territory of a limited number of nationals of third countries, without criminal records and in conditions of transit”, and states that it “does not include Haitian nationals nor unaccompanied minors”. It says the mechanism “will be applied case by case and will have the financial and operational backing of the United States Government to ensure adequate conditions during the temporary stay and to facilitate the orderly return to countries of origin”, and that implementation will follow national law and the country’s international obligations “without altering Dominican migration policy nor the procedures in force for border control and management”.
What is not in it is as informative as what is. No title for the memorandum. No number. No duration. No mention of asylum, refuge or protection claims. No mention of the text being published. No mention of Congress. The cap and the one-year term come from the Foreign Minister at a press conference and from a monitoring project, not from the communiqué.
The same communiqué packages the migration memorandum with two other things agreed the same day: a temporary extension of access, parking and overflight for United States aircraft and personnel at facilities previously used, and the designation by decree of two organisations as terrorist. The Coalition records that because it is how the arrangement was presented, and a reader deciding what was traded for what should see the whole announcement rather than the migration paragraph on its own.
The Dominican Republic is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. Its refugee procedure rests on a decree of 1984 rather than a statute. Claims are lodged with the Oficina Nacional para los Refugiados, which compiles the file and refers it to the Comisión Nacional para los Refugiados for determination.
That is the system on paper. Three things about it matter more than its existence.
First, the fifteen-day rule against a stay of days. The refugee agency’s published instruction is that an application “must be presented within the first 15 days after arrival to the country”, with a passport or identity document or a sworn declaration in its place, a medical certificate confirming absence of infectious disease, four two-inch photographs and two side-profile photographs, a written testimony and supporting material. A document permitting the holder to remain is issued while the claim is pending; it is free, it bars paid work, and it must be renewed every thirty days. Set that against the Government’s own description of the arrangement: return to the country of origin “in a matter of days”, with a stay reported as roughly seven to fifteen. A person would have to assemble a medical certificate, six photographs and a written account, and lodge them, inside the window in which they are to be put back on a plane.
Second, the office has two addresses. The refugee agency gives one street address for the Oficina Nacional para los Refugiados; the migration organisation that is the arrangement’s own implementing partner gives a different one. Both were read on the same day and both are current. The Coalition prints both below and endorses neither, because a person with fifteen days and no lawyer should not be sent to the wrong building on this page’s authority.
Third, the State’s own procedure decides almost nothing. Across the three years in which the Dominican Government’s procedure recorded any decisions at all, it decided sixty-eight cases and recognised fifteen people. In 2020 it decided thirty-three and recognised nobody. The larger recognition figures in the published data for 2022 and 2023 are recorded against the refugee agency’s own procedure, not the State’s, and conflating them would flatter the State’s record substantially.
This is the strongest section on the page, and it rests entirely on the Committee against Torture’s own papers and the depositary.
Convention against Torture. Ratified; in force for the Dominican Republic since 23 February 2012.
Article 22, individual communications. No declaration. An individual cannot petition the Committee against Torture about the Dominican Republic. No interim measures, no views, nothing.
Article 21, inter-state complaints. No declaration.
Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. Not a party, not a signatory. No national preventive mechanism, and none owed. No visit by the United Nations subcommittee is possible, because its mandate runs only to parties.
Initial report. Due 23 February 2013. Never submitted. Thirteen years, six months and nineteen days overdue as at 11 September 2026.
Ever examined by the Committee. Never. No dialogue, no concluding observations, no country document of any kind in fourteen years as a party.
Two of those rows deserve their provenance stated, because an earlier dossier in this project logged a correction for a retrieval tool reporting a false negative on exactly this question. The article 21 and 22 rows were checked twice by independent means: against the depositary’s declarations section, in which the Dominican Republic does not appear, and against the Committee’s annual reports for three successive sessions, read locally with a text extractor rather than through a retrieval tool, in which it appears nowhere. The overdue date is not the Coalition’s arithmetic: it is printed in the Committee’s own annotated agenda, which lists the Dominican Republic under initial reports with the date 23 February 2013 and notes that in May 2018 the State accepted the simplified reporting procedure “owing to the amount of time by which the initial report was overdue”.
What remains is the Inter-American system, which the Coalition reports separately and does not merge with the United Nations position. That route exists and has been used about this country. It is also a route that produces reports and judgments rather than an emergency stop, and it is not available to a person who has days.
The first days
The published rule is that a refuge application must be presented within fifteen days of arrival. If a claim is to be made at all it has to be started on the first day, not the tenth, because the documents take longer to collect than the stay is expected to last.
The Government has said publicly that applications for refuge will not be accepted from people transferred under this arrangement. A written application with a dated receipt is what makes a refusal visible later. Send it even if you are told it will not be accepted.
The refugee agency and the migration organisation give different street addresses for the Oficina Nacional para los Refugiados. Take both. If the first is wrong, the second is the other published one, not a guess.
It has an office in the country, a legal assistance line and a messaging number, all printed below. It is not a member of the determining commission, but under the governing decree it may itself seek review of a decision.
No petition to the Committee against Torture, and no body with a right to enter a place of detention. Anything that can be done in a United Nations forum has to be done before departure, from the country doing the removing.
No transfer under this arrangement has been recorded. The first person sent will know more than every source on this page.
Who is reachable in the Dominican Republic
Has an office in the country. Publishes the refuge procedure and provides legal assistance. Not a member of the determining commission, but may seek review of a decision under the governing decree.
Checked 11 September 2026 · UNHCR Dominican Republic, contact page
Published by the refugee agency on its where-to-find-help page. A different number from the messaging line above; both are printed as published and neither is presented as the other.
Checked 11 September 2026 · UNHCR Dominican Republic, where to find help
Listed by the refugee agency under legal assistance in the Spanish edition of its help page. The English edition of the same page lists only the agency itself, so a person reading in English would not learn this organisation exists. No address or email is published there and none is printed here.
Checked 11 September 2026 · UNHCR Dominican Republic, where to find help, Spanish edition
Two current official sources give two different addresses. Both are printed and neither is endorsed. No telephone number or email could be verified, so none is printed.
Checked 11 September 2026 · UNHCR and IOM MigrantInfo, read the same day
Investigating. The commission decides claims and is chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ministry's own transparency page for it returned a 404 on two attempts. A person cannot presently reach it through the page the State publishes for that purpose.
Checked 11 September 2026
The Dominican Republic sits on both sides of this practice, and a page that reported only the inbound arrangement would leave out the half that has actually happened to people.
Dominican nationals have been removed by the United States to other people’s countries. At least one in a group arriving in Paraguay on 22 or 23 April 2026, and one more to Paraguay on 21 August 2026. Six to Costa Rica, cumulatively, through 6 August 2026. A transfer to Panama on 5 June 2026 is recorded by trackers and is not otherwise confirmed. So: a state that has agreed to receive third country nationals and has received none, whose own nationals are being sent to third countries under the same family of arrangements. No Dominican official statement on the removal of Dominican nationals to third countries has been located, and the Coalition would like one.
Two things must not be folded into that. Ordinary repatriation is a different subject: 2,391 Dominican nationals were deported from the United States to the Dominican Republic in the first eight months of 2026, which is removal to the country of nationality and is not a third-country removal. And the Dominican Republic’s treatment of Haitians and of Dominicans of Haitian descent, including the statelessness created by a 2013 constitutional judgment, is heavily documented, is a serious subject, and is not this one. The exclusion of Haitian nationals from this memorandum is the only point at which the two touch, and that exclusion is stated in the Government’s communiqué.
The Government published a communiqué on the day of signature. Several states in this series published nothing at all, and some denied for months that an instrument existed. This one named the framework, named the exclusions, named the funder and named the implementing partner, in writing, the same day.
It also said no to something. Haitian nationals and unaccompanied minors are excluded by name, and people with criminal records are excluded. The arrangement is case by case, and the ministry’s formulation is that nobody enters “without the authorisation of the Dominican government”.
Nobody has been sent. A hundred and twenty-two days at a stated ceiling of thirty a month is a theoretical capacity of about a hundred and twenty people and an actual figure of zero. Whatever the reason, the arrangement has not been used.
The refugee agency has an office in the country, publishes a procedure in two languages, runs a legal assistance line, and under the governing decree may seek review of a decision itself. Several states in this series have no office within a thousand miles.
And the Dominican Republic is a party to both refugee instruments, which three states in this same batch of guides are not. A state with a decree-based procedure that decides ten cases a year is in a different position from a state with no procedure at all, and the Coalition says so rather than levelling them.
The memorandum’s title, text and terms. Nothing on this page is quoted from it. The cap, the duration and the protection clause all reach this page at second hand.
Whether the instrument provides for protection claims to be examined in the Dominican Republic. This is the central unresolved question and the reason for the alert. One monitoring project says it does; the receiving ministry said it does not. Publication of the text would settle it in a minute.
Whether any person has been transferred. None is recorded by either tracker; the Coalition does not assert that none occurred.
Why refugee and asylum-seeker populations broke between 2023 and 2024. No explanation is published.
The correct address of the office where a claim is lodged. Two official sources, two addresses.
Any contact for the determining commission, whose official page returns a 404.
The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.
The text of the memorandum.
Any Dominican official statement about the removal of Dominican nationals to Paraguay, Costa Rica or Panama.
Any statement by the refugee agency about the 12 May memorandum. None was located.
A working contact for the determining commission, and a verified address and telephone number for the office where claims are lodged.
If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Every source relied on above, linked where it can be linked, so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.
The arrangement. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Dominican Republic, Comunicado del Gobierno de República Dominicana sobre la cooperación con Estados Unidos de América en el marco del Escudo de las Américas, 12 May 2026, read in Spanish at mirex.gob.do; and the ministry’s statement of 13 May 2026, from which the sentence about refuge applications is taken. Diario Libre, 13 May 2026, for the Foreign Minister’s remarks and for senators not knowing the details. CiberCuba, 14 May 2026, for the one-year term, the reported seven to fifteen day stay, and the statement that the memorandum was not sent to Congress, each recorded as single-source news reporting. Listín Diario, 1 June 2026, for the absence of arrivals and the officials’ statements. Third Country Deportation Watch, page last updated 21 August 2026, for the monthly ceiling, the transfer position, and the account of the memorandum’s protection clause that this page sets against the ministry’s own words.
The asylum system. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Dominican Republic help site, for the procedure, the fifteen-day deadline, the document list, the thirty-day renewal and the contacts. International Organization for Migration, MigrantInfo Dominican Republic, for the second address and the free-of-charge statement. Decreto 2330 of 1984 for the commission and the thirty-day decision rule. Decision and population figures from the refugee agency’s Refugee Data Finder; percentages and ratios computed by the Coalition from those figures and flagged as such where used.
Supervision. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-9 for the Convention against Torture, in whose declarations section the Dominican Republic does not appear, and IV-9-b for the Optional Protocol, to which it is not a party. Committee against Torture, annotated provisional agenda for its eighty-third session, CAT/C/83/1 of 5 September 2025, for the initial report date of 23 February 2013 and for the 2018 acceptance of the simplified reporting procedure. Committee against Torture annual reports A/79/44, A/80/44 and A/81/44, read locally with a text extractor, in none of which the Dominican Republic appears.
The outbound record. Third Country Deportation Watch country pages for Paraguay, Costa Rica and Panama, read 11 September 2026, with the Panama entry recorded as tracker-reported and unconfirmed. Listín Diario, 1 September 2026, citing the Dirección General de Migración, for the repatriation figures that this page separates from the subject.
Compiled 11 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Where a document could not be opened, this page says so rather than quoting it at second hand as though it had been read. Four things were changed before publication and are recorded because the method requires it. A draft stated that the Dominican Republic has not ratified the 1967 Protocol; it has, and the error came from a reading of a summary table rather than the depositary. A draft described the asylum system as inoperative; that is a monitoring organisation’s characterisation and it is both too strong and, in the specific respect set out above, not strong enough, so the decision figures are published instead. A draft assumed a Federal Register notice would exist because one exists for every other country in this series; none exists here, and the assumption was tested rather than carried. And an English rendering of a Spanish original was very nearly published inside quotation marks as though it were the text; the Spanish is quoted and the English is given as a translation. No person transferred under this arrangement is named on this page, because none is known to exist. Corrections to the Coalition.