A woman inside the truck appears to be preventing the boy from falling.
A shocking video has emerged from the Dominican Republic that shows a little boy hanging from a government truck. According to CNN, the child was hanging from the arms of a woman detained in the municipality of Santo Domingo on Saturday. The vehicle was an immigration control truck used by local authorities to transport detainees. The little boy is dangerously dangling off the back of the truck and appears to be kept from falling by the woman inside the vehicle.
The woman’s arms stretch through the bars of the door.
Una imagen que habla más que mil palabras. Este niño colgado de los brazos de su madre en un camión de migración es un recordatorio desgarrador de las consecuencias de una política migratoria inhumana. #HumanidadEnCrisis#JusticiaMigratoria” pic.twitter.com/npqYKhiAEG
— Cañeros Organizados (@EsclavizadosRD) June 2, 2023
The clip shows a crowd gathered around the truck in an area. As it starts to move, the boy wearing a red t-shirt and a lower is seen clearly.
A man, who was an immigration agent according to CNN, is sitting on the back of the truck, next to the child. He extends a hand and rests it on the shoulder of the child.
In a statement, the country’s migration director Venancio Alcantara described the incident as “a disturbing and heart-breaking”.
CNN quoted the Caribbean nation’s migrant agency as saying that the officer seen in the video has been fired, noting that he had been in the job only for 20 days.
The agency also said that the woman, who was seen preventing the child from falling down, was released after the agents became aware of the situation.
According to International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, Dominican Republic hosts the largest number of foreign-born population among the Caribbean countries. It had an estimated 450,000 immigrants in 2010, according to the World Bank. This means that around 4.5 per cent of its total population is foreign-born, said IOM.