On Sept. 15, the Dominican Republic closed all entry points along its border with neighboring Haiti. As a Black queer Dominican who grew up in New York City, I'm no stranger to the realities of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, colorism, racism, and anti-Haitianism that exist within Dominican culture(s). The recent events at the border are more ticks on the long timeline of the erasure and removal of Haitian folks and Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. In this last decade, the Dominican state has only further doubled down and ramped up the forceful, traumatic, and violent deportations and mistreatment of Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian migrants. Famously self-proclaimed as the first independent Black nation, Haiti won its war for independence from France on Jan. 1, 1804.