Haitian criminals strike fear in Dominican barrios

SANTIAGO, Dominican Republic. – The Coordinator of the Neighborhood Boards of the city’s southern barrios on Thursday issued a 15 day deadline to the Immigration authorities to remove the undocumented Haitians in that area, on threats they’ll carry out the expulsion.

The deadline comes just one week after similar threats from residents of other barrios of Santiago and one day after the law enforcement agencies acknowledged that at least 1,000 fugitives who escaped from various collapsed jails during last year’s earthquake in Haiti are hiding out in the Dominican Republic.

Pedro Paulino, accompanied by other community leaders, said the foreigners pollute the environment and many of them commit crimes.

They made the warning to the Government, in representation the social groups of the barrios Arroyo Hondo, Lindo, Obrero, La Cañada del Diablo, and 27 de Febrero, among others.

Paulino said the Haitians do their physiological needs outdoors and contaminate rivers and streams, causing infections that may lead to diseases, cholera among them.

He said they’ll wait for the authorities to remove the Haitians and it they don’t, then it will be the residents who’ll do so.

He cautioned that many Haitians carry guns, some of them homemade, and have even threatened some of the residents that if they try to expel them, the foreigners will respond with gunfire.