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Mostradores vacíos de una oficina de migración en un aeropuerto dominicano, con la bandera de República Dominicana al fondo
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Dominican Republic removes 56,140 migration alerts lacking judicial backing

The Attorney General's Office and Migration removed 56,140 controls accumulated between 1990 and 2026, many without judicial backing, four years after the…

--- The context --- Thousands of alerts and exit bans without judicial backing remained in the database of the General Directorate of Migration for years after their removal had been announced. The Constitutional Court established in 2022 that no authority could restrict a citizen's free movement without a court order, yet that ruling took four years to be carried out in the registry. --- The facts --- The Attorney General's Office and the General Directorate of Migration reported that they removed 56,140 controls from a database holding records accumulated between 1990 and 2026. Both institutions acknowledged that thousands of files whose purpose had already been fulfilled remained in the system and affected the free transit of citizens who should no longer have been covered by those measures. In ruling TC/0338/22, the Constitutional Court resolved the case of Armando Rivera Gómez, who had been prevented from leaving the country through an alert, and upheld the decision ordering that alert lifted. In ruling TC/1186/25, from November 2025, the court declared unconstitutional a Tax Code provision that allowed departures to be blocked for people investigated for alleged tax fraud without a judicial decision. --- The positions --- In 2021, Miriam Germán Brito said the Attorney General's Office had taken the necessary measures to avoid alerts placed by prosecutorial bodies, after former attorney general Jean Alain Rodríguez was prevented from leaving without a court order. Attorney General Yeni Berenice Reynoso formally asked migration director Luis Rafael Lee Ballester to prioritize lifting records without legal basis, historical records without identification, and records from completed processes. --- What remains unknown --- The available information does not state how many specific people were affected during these years or whether every citizen covered by a removed record is now fully free of practical effects. It also does not specify what mechanisms will prevent alerts without judicial backing from accumulating again in a database that gathered records between 1990 and 2026 without regular official updating for decades. --- Unanswered questions --- How many people were affected by alerts that no longer had judicial backing? Is any record still active that restricts a citizen's departure without a judge's order? What permanent controls will keep the database from again accumulating expired or non-individualized bans? --- EPM analysis --- This case shows a long distance between a recognized right and its effective application. The joint technical panel found administrative errors and judicial orders that were not individualized, signs of a system that operated for years without sufficient cleanup. That the correction arrives after two constitutional rulings underlines that freedom of transit depends on carefully maintained administrative records, not only on declared principles. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, removing 56,140 controls without judicial backing corrects a concrete harm to freedom of transit and gives practical effect to what the Constitutional Court decided in TC/0338/22 and TC/1186/25. The measure protects citizens covered by expired, historical or non-individualized records, but its full value will depend on the cleanup being permanent, verifiable and able to prevent an administrative alert from again replacing a judge's order. It should also be communicated clearly to each affected person, so that no citizen discovers an improper restriction at a migration checkpoint.
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