As we go to press on the morning of Nov. 26, Dominican authorities have been holding a popular Haitian-American journalist in an immigration detention facility for almost three days without charges, although he is a U.S. citizen and was legally entering the Dominican Republic on personal business.
Both high-ranking Dominican government and U.S. Embassy sources say that he will be flown back to the United States today. But this is not the first time such assurances have been made.
Jean Max Louissaint, 49, known to most Haitians as “Ralph Laurent” (the name he uses on his hugely popular YouTube channel “Live Tanbou Verite a” or “Drum of Truth Live”), flew from Newark, NJ to Santo Domingo by United Airlines flight 2404 on the afternoon Nov. 23. As he passed through immigration, he was pulled aside by authorities without any explanation. He was then taken to the Center of Migratory Interdiction in Haina, run by the General Directorate of Migration (DGM) where he was put into a holding cell.
Around 5:00 a.m the next morning, on a cell phone borrowed from another detainee, Louissaint called a Haïti Liberté journalist in New York to explain his dire predicament. The officers who arrested him had taken his cellphone, passport, and luggage, Louissaint said, and had demanded that he sign a paper, threatening violence if he refused.
Above all, he feared that the Dominican authorities would deliver him into the hands of the Haitian National Police (PNH), of which Louissaint has been a very fierce critic, reporting on many executions, massacres, beatings, and other violent crimes the force has committed in recent years.
Haïti Liberté immediately contacted the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which, according to its website, “promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.”
Louissaint’s arrest clearly appears to be reprisal for his reporting on the PNH’s crimes, his critical stance against Haiti’s de facto government, and his frequent interviews with leaders of the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) Political Party, particularly of its leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.
“Jean Max Louissaint is a prominent Haitian-American YouTube journalist… with over 30,000 subscribers, who produces a daily broadcast. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen.,” Haïti Liberté wrote in its urgent request to CPJ for immediate intervention. “When he entered the country yesterday afternoon, Dominican authorities arrested him and confiscated his cell-phone and luggage, all on the basis of a legally deficient November 2024 Haitian police arrest warrant charging him with ‘criminal associations’ and ‘inciting violence,’ adding … that he is ‘armed and dangerous.’ The warrant’s charges are completely false, slanderous, and politically motivated.”
Haïti Liberté also explained that the PNH, then headed by the now dismissed police chief Rameau Normil, had issued other specious warrants based on rumor, fabrications, and political pressure from various rumor-mongering, discredited media pundits and politicians.
“For their ‘thought crimes,’ the Haitian police also issued warrants against two other Haitian-American and Haitian-Canadian journalists [Kervens Louissaint and Beatha Prospère] living abroad at that time,” Haïti Liberté told the CPJ.
Ironically, all three warrants have now been scrubbed from the “wanted” list on the brand new Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) website.
The Florida and Haiti-based Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights (GADH) also sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Leah Francis Campos, asking her to intervene with Dominican authorities so that they would not turn Louissaint over to the Haitian police and certain death. “Our intervention is to ensure that Jean Max Louissaint is not sent to Haiti,” wrote GADH’s president Jean-Marc Mesidor. “He will be destroyed there.”
Several officials in the Dominican government and the U.S. embassy have said that Louissaint will be sent back to the United States imminently, but then nothing happens. On the evening of Mon., Nov. 24, Dominican officials told Louissaint’s lawyers and Haïti Liberté’s Santo Domingo correspondent that he would be released the next morning (Nov. 25) at 10:00 a.m.. However, Louissaint spent that entire day at the Migration Directorate in Santo Domingo, with both U.S. and Dominican officials promising that he would be flown back to the U.S. “that evening.” Instead, at the end of the day, he was loaded on a bus and sent back to the Haina Detention Facility, for another night in detention.
The delays and apparent slow-walking are infuriating and exasperating Jean Max Louissaint’s friends, family, and supporters, wary of an official about-face and anxious for his release.
Haïti Liberté has continued pressing the CPJ for word of progress on the journalist’s release. The organization’s investigator said he was making the relevant inquiries to various Dominican authorities about Louissaint’s situation.
Such pressure does little to assuage Louissaint’s own fears that his life may be in grave danger.
“I think this prolonged detention is extremely political, and he should be immediately released,” GADH’s Mesidor told Haïti Liberté. “The Dominicans have absolutely no reason to hold Mr. Louissaint. They’ve searched all his luggage and his telephone. He is simply a journalist, an analyst, and an investigator who does his job. What reason do they have to continue to hold him?”
