Amid much criticism over their recent deportation policies, the Dominican Republic has agreed to cooperate with an inquiry by the Organization of American States.

In the wake of thousands of migrants having left the Dominican Republic for Haiti, the inter-continental organization will be sending an investigative team to the capital city of Santo Domingo.

An estimated 17,000 poeple who are of Haitian descent or Haitian immigrantsd have left the Dominican Republic for Haiti. As quoted in the New York Times in June, Pedro Cano Olivares, a coordinator for the Jesuit Service in Jimani, spoke of the large numbers of people exiting the Dominican Republic, saying: “All the arbitrary deportations of the past six months, people getting stopped in the streets of towns and cities just for their skin color, raises a great deal of uncertainty and fear.”

The Dominican authorities maintain that those that have left have done so voluntarily after the deadline for a registration program for undocumented migrants passed. Haitian officials have, however, accused the Dominican Republic of using force to rid itself of the migrants.

Addressing these concerns the Interior Minister Ramon Fadul said, "We have nothing to hide, because what we are doing is applying our laws on migration as every country in the world does and to do this we have done what was needed."

As reported by the BBC, Jose Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division, said, "People are being detained and shoved across the border."

In a 2013 a high court ruling said that individuals born in the Dominican Republic between 1929 and 2010 had Dominican citizenship, but stipulated that those that were born to undocumented migrants were not protected as citizens.

Vivanco says that this has effectively denied tens of thousands of citizens their rights to a nationality and rendered them stateless, explaining that: "Dominicans of Haitian descent have been unable to access basic public services such as registering children at birth, enrolling in school and college, participating in the formal economy or travelling around the country without risk of expulsion."