The Trump administration has reversed a Biden-era decision that banned the Dominican Republic’s largest employer from exporting sugar to the United States, due to allegations of forced labor and abuse of Haitian workers
In 2022, the Biden administration banned the import of sugar from the Dominican company Central Romana into the United States due to allegations of abuse and forced labor involving Haitians working at the large enterprise, the top employer in the neighboring country.
That ban—targeting the main sugar producer and exporter from the Dominican Republic to the U.S.—was lifted in March by the Trump administration.
More than a month after exports resumed, working conditions for employees, most of them Haitians, continue to worsen, according to half a dozen interviews conducted by AyiboPost with three company workers, human rights advocates, and local organizations.
Two Haitian workers load cut sugarcane onto a cart to transport it to the factory, in a private cane field near Santa Fe, in San Pedro de Macorís. The cane harvested there is also delivered to the Central Romana factory. Photo : Pierre Michel
No public information is available about the terms of the negotiations that led to the lifting of the ban.
According to three human rights defenders familiar with the workers, contacted by AyiboPost, the decision to lift the ban was not preceded by meaningful corrective action against forced labor.
Central Romana Corporation Ltd., founded in 1912, is one of the leading agro-industrial and tourism companies in the Dominican Republic. It employs around 20,000 people across all its operations.
Sugar production from sugarcane remains its main activity, relying heavily on Haitian workers or those of Haitian descent. These workers cultivate more than 65,000 hectares of sugarcane and process it at the company’s own refinery.
The American company Fanjul Corporation holds a 35% stake in Central Romana Corporation Ltd.
Read also : Haina, the hell of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic.
Highly involved in politics, the company contributed, through individual donations and its political action committees, one million dollars to the Make America Great Again political action committee — in support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — and an additional $413,000 to the Republican Party committee in 2024.
Reports available on the U.S. Senate website indicate that Central Romana spent over $1 million on lobbying between 2023 and 2025.
The U.S. ban came into effect in October 2022, just weeks after the Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) and other NGOs sent an open letter to the Biden administration urging action against forced labor at the company.
The ban was enacted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which prohibits the importation of goods made using forced or prison labor.
The nonprofit Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) has closely monitored the situation at Central Romana since 2021. The group Based in Chicago has worked on corporate responsibility issues related to human rights and environmental protection since 2016.
In correspondence with AyiboPost, CAL Executive Director Charity Ryerson said that field data collected from workers continues to show excessive overtime, wage withholding, abusive living and working conditions, and other signs of forced labor.
AyiboPost contacted the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic as well as Haiti’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship. This article will be updated if a response is received.
Central Romana workers live in “bateys”—housing built by plantation owners to accommodate laborers during the sugarcane harvest.
A Haitian worker cutting sugarcane in a private field near Santa Fe, in San Pedro de Macorís. The cane harvested there is also transported to the Central Romana factory. Photo : Pierre Michel
Three current employees told AyiboPost they endure harsh working conditions in rundown housing with no access to clean water or toilets. Some report working from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. without breaks.
One employee, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of being fired, said he sleeps in a crumbling house where he must stand all night when it rains.
“At work, we face more misery than solutions. No one cares whether we sleep in decent conditions or whether our wages are enough to survive,” said another Central Romana worker contacted by AyiboPost.
A 30-something employee who left the town of Marigot in southeast Haiti in October 2017 also complained about his wages.
“What we earn isn’t even enough to meet our daily needs,” he said. “For eight hours of work, we earn 580 pesos—around 10 U.S. dollars.” He added that sometimes he is forced to use the same water meant for animals.
CAL Executive Director Charity Ryerson said that field data collected from workers continues to show excessive overtime, wage withholding, abusive living and working conditions, and other signs of forced labor.
The cane cutter said he wants to return to live in Haiti, but his dire financial situation prevents him.
AyiboPost reached out to Central Romana on May 2 via a contact form on its website for a statement. The company had not responded at the time of publication.
Since 2021, CAL has conducted multiple on-site visits, interviewing dozens of cane cutters and batey residents.
According to Ryerson, between 2024 and 2025, CAL documented cases where three to four adults shared a single twin mattress in a shack designed for one person in bateys owned by Central Romana.
Children often drink contaminated water, and elderly people die without medical care, suffering under extreme heat, she added.
Other workers, she said, continue cutting sugarcane into old age, without access to social security or the pensions they’ve contributed to for decades.
The situation is similar in other Dominican sugar companies, where systematic labor rights violations have also been documented.
The conditions faced by Central Romana workers are part of a broader context shaped by increasingly harsh Dominican immigration policies since 2024, which have led to the deportation of thousands of Haitians, often under inhumane conditions.
According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), nearly 80,000 Haitians have been deported to Haiti since the beginning of 2025.
On April 21, 2025, the Dominican government announced a new protocol with 15 measures, including requiring healthcare workers to bill immigrants for services and to ask for ID, a work permit, and proof of residency.
AyiboPost contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This article will be updated if they respond.
The exploitation of Haitians in Dominican sugarcane fields dates back to the 20th century.
At least three bilateral agreements were signed between Haiti and the Dominican Republic between 1952 and 1966 to regulate the entry of Haitian laborers.
Children often drink contaminated water, and elderly people die without medical care, suffering under extreme heat, she added.
These agreements allowed the migration of about 60,000 Haitians to the Dominican Republic.
That number rose to nearly one million about twenty years later. After the fall of Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, these agreements—already criticized for failing to protect workers’ rights—were not renewed by the Haitian government.
This opened the door to human trafficking networks taking over migration flows along the border.
Today, about 30,000 people cross annually.
“When you arrive in a batey, the first thing you see is an endless cycle of misery: people struggling to survive, children being born and growing up there…,” said Fabiola Luis Pierre, president of a development aid group and public relations officer for the human rights organization Movimiento por los Derechos Humanos, la Paz y la Justicia Global (MONDHA) in the Dominican Republic.
Since 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs has published seven reports documenting dangerous working conditions and systematic labor rights violations in the sector. These came after a scathing labor rights complaint filed more than a decade ago under a trade agreement.
Following the 2022 ban, Central Romana introduced a series of measures on its plantations to get the restriction lifted.
According to human rights lawyer Carlos Sanchez Diaz, between 2022 and 2024, improvements were observed in the bateys in areas such as housing, medical coverage, and a slight wage increase.
But Sanchez Diaz, a Dominican legal expert, described these changes as superficial: “A bandage on a deep wound—mainly for media optics,” he told AyiboPost.
“Ideally,” Sanchez Diaz added, “the press and civil society should be able to monitor the process and evaluate whether real changes are happening. But that doesn’t happen, because [Central Romana officials] don’t allow anyone into the plant.”
For Charity Ryerson, forced labor will continue as long as the company denies workers the right to organize and refuses to involve cane cutters in efforts to improve their conditions.
By :Fenel Pélissier & Wethzer Piercin
Cover | A man in a sugarcane field in the background, (Source : Freepik) and on the left, a photo of U.S. President Donald Trump, (source : Los Angeles Times) Collage: Florentz Charles for AyiboPost – May 8, 2025.
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