SANTO DOMINGO – At a high-level follow-up meeting chaired by Vice President Raquel Peña, Dominican Republic’s Interior and Police Minister Faride Raful outlined key advancements made by the country’s Joint Task Force, headlined by the dramatic rescue of 14 minors from an alleged abusive facility in Haina and a major expansion of preventive policing across high-traffic commercial zones.
The 14 rescued children, whose ages span from three months to 17 years old, were pulled from a property operated by the Restoring Life Foundation, a group framed as a religious organization operating in Haina’s Las Paredes sector. The operation that led to their liberation was triggered after one minor managed to escape the facility and alerted authorities to widespread abuses: allegations of forced labor, prolonged social isolation, and routine physical violence against the children held at the site.
Multiple Dominican law enforcement and social welfare agencies collaborated on the raid, including the National Police, the Public Ministry, and the National Council for Childhood and Adolescence (Conani). In addition to successfully extracting all 14 minors to safety, the operation resulted in the arrest of 13 people connected to the facility, including 69-year-old Ángel Gabriel Cabañas, a key leader of the organization. Investigations are still ongoing to fully map out the network of abuse and assign full criminal responsibility to all parties involved.
Beyond the Haina rescue operation, Raful used the meeting to address widespread public concerns about rising safety risks in retail and commercial districts across the country. She emphasized that active participation from citizens is a critical component of effective crime prevention: formal complaints from residents and business owners allow law enforcement to accurately target high-risk areas and deploy predictive, proactive operations that stop crimes before they occur.
Raful also shared detailed data showing the Dominican government’s major investment in expanding the country’s police force over recent years. When the current administration took office in 2020, only 13% of all police officers were assigned to proactive preventive patrols. Today, that figure has jumped to 36%, a shift made possible by the recruitment and training of nearly 12,000 new law enforcement officers who completed a year-long professional training program. An additional 2,000 new officers are on track to join the national force in November, and the government is currently moving to acquire new patrol vehicles, motorcycles, and body-worn cameras to equip frontline officers with the tools they need to do their work safely and effectively.
These investments have already started to move the needle on national public safety outcomes, according to the latest official crime statistics. By the end of August, the Dominican Republic’s cumulative national homicide rate stood at 7.41 per 100,000 inhabitants, marking a noticeable drop from the 2025 full-year rate of 8.39 per 100,000, confirming a downward trend in violent crime across the country.