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DE RUEHDG #1349/01 1112000
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 
 
 
¶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