Leah Campos and the Reason Why the Dominican Media Power Refuses to Publish Her Recent Statements Made During Her Visit to the Anti-Corruption Digital Platform Somos Pueblo
A diplomat tours digital studios. A business council pushes for censorship laws. And beneath it all, a web of complicity that smells deeply troubling.
When Leah F. Campos, the United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, walked through the door of Santiago Matías’s studio on March 9, 2026, she likely did not imagine that this simple gesture would serve as a direct challenge to the engine room of Dominican media power. Ten days later, she repeated the move by visiting the Somos Pueblo studio.
(U.S. Embassy in the DR, post dated March 9, 2026 Visit to Santiago Matías: https://x.com/embajadausaenrd/status/2031202098470080778?s=46)
Source: U.S. Embassy in the DR, post dated March 19, 2026 Visit to Somos Pueblo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWFDFmykR_A/?img_index=7&igsh=czN2dGFyN3R4YXN3
Two visits. Two public statements from the embassy’s official accounts. A message that the establishment would have preferred never to hear.
The major Dominican media outlets covered the diplomat’s visits to government institutions. But when the ambassador appeared in digital spaces, their pages and screens fell silent, a silence that reveals prior censorship. It was not an oversight. It was policy.
The Problem That No One in the Traditional Media Wanted to Name
To understand why Campos’s visits are so uncomfortable for certain actors, one must go back to the root of the problem which lies not in Washington but in Port-au-Prince, or more precisely, in the Florida lounges where certain Haitian businessmen lived comfortably while financing terrorism in their home country. These Haitian businessmen, who had ties to Dominican entrepreneurs and politicians, were deported by the Trump administration.
The sanctions imposed by Canada on that Haitian business sector for financing organizations that the Trump administration formally classified as terrorist gangs lit a fuse that no one in the Dominican elite wanted to see.
Original source: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/05/terrorist-designations-of-viv-ansanm-and-gran-grif
This exposed Dominican businessmen and the Dominican government as having provided material support to those who financed terrorism in Haiti.
Behind those deportations of Haitian businessmen from the United States lay an uncomfortable question: who were their partners in the Dominican Republic partners of the financiers of terrorist gangs?
The United Nations, for its part, had documented that these same 26 gangs had diversified their activities into child trafficking, including organ trafficking. This was a coincidence that Dominican digital communicators did not let pass: at the same time, records of missing Dominican children with no trace had increased at a rate that the traditional media also found no urgency in investigating. The Minister of Police even stated that such claims were impossible and urged people not to believe digital media.
Official report source, dated February 20, 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ohchrbinuh-children-trafficked-gangs-rethinking-response
While the major Dominican media kept their pens away from the page and their screens free of discomfort, it was the YouTubers and independent digital communicators who began asking the questions that traditional journalism avoided. They had no state advertising contracts. They did not depend on corporate ad revenue. Their only lifeline was digital platforms and the audiences they had built from scratch.
From that fragile but real independence, they pointed to what was difficult to ignore: that Dominican businessmen and politicians maintained corporate and commercial ties with the same Haitian entrepreneurs who, according to Washington, were financing terrorism in Haiti.
The digital communicators also raised a comparison that stung.
When the Trump administration decided to deport the Florida-based Haitian businessmen who were fueling terrorism in their home country, the logic was clear: there is no point in tolerating, within your own territory, those who generate from a distance a migration crisis that ends up costing the entire region billions of dollars. The question that the digital communicators put on the table was direct and unsparing: why did President Luis Abinader’s government not do the same? Why, instead of banning their entry as it did with others did it protect them? This has put the lives of independent digital communicators at risk, precisely because no limits were placed on those Dominican businessmen who provide material support to terrorism. There are even reports that some are connected to Hezbollah financing networks.
Behind that protection, there may lie complicity in never truly resolving the Haitian migration crisis a crisis that, in the meantime, has cost the Dominican State incalculable resources in security, deportations, infrastructure, and social pressure.
Nine Attempts and an Agenda That Smells Like Beijing, China 🇨🇳
The response from the National Competitiveness Council and the government was not long in coming, though it took time to show itself clearly. The National Competitiveness Council has now accumulated nine attempts to push legislation that, under various technical guises, aims at the same objective: to regulate, condition, and in practice silence independent digital communicators. These are laws drafted with the same philosophy China uses to manage its social media though presented in the politically correct language of “content regulation.”
The traditional media, colluding with the interests that finance them, closed ranks. The government contributed institutional silence. And the businessmen applied the pressure.
THE EIGHT LEGISLATIVE CENSORSHIP ATTEMPTS (2020–2025)
The researcher identifies a pattern of legislative persistence that, taken together, constitutes what he calls “a strategy of legal attrition.” The eight documented episodes and their sources are detailed below:
1. State Advertising Law (December 2020):
Four months after taking office, the government attempted to pass a law granting the president discretionary control over the distribution of state advertising. Dr. Rafael Molina Morillo publicly warned that the law could be used to punish media outlets critical of the government.
Source: El Nacional https://elnacional.com.do/publicidad-estatal/
2. Cybercrime Law (June 2022):
Listín Diario reported that a cybercrime bill included provisions that restricted freedom of expression on social media.
Source: Listín Diario, 06/21/2022 https://listindiario.com/la-republica/2022/06/21/726689/ley-sobre-ciberdelitos-pone-limites-a-libertad-de-expresion.html
3. Privacy and Honor Law (May 2022):
Diario Libre gathered opinions from legislators and communicators who described this bill as a new “gag law” against freedom of expression.
Source: Diario Libre, 05/30/2022 https://www.diariolibre.com/actualidad/politica/2022/05/30/creen-ley-regularia-intimidad-crearia-una-mordaza-a-prensa/1855525
4. DNI Law (Christmas Eve 2023):
On the night of December 24, 2023, legislation was introduced granting the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI) powers to detain communicators who refused to reveal their sources. The Dominican Constitutional Court struck down the law in December 2024.
Source: Listín Diario, December 7, 2024 https://listindiario.com/la-republica/justicia/20241206/tribunal-constitucional-anula-creacion-dni_836678.html
5. Self-Regulation Resolution for Content Creators (November 2024):
Representative Bolívar Valera introduced a resolution to self-regulate digital content creators. It was rejected by communicators such as Santiago Matías.
Source: Listín Diario, 11/30/2024 https://listindiario.com/la-republica/congreso/20241130/bolivar-valera-explica-resolucion-busca-autorregular-creadores-contenid-medios-digitales_835841.html
6. Hate Speech Law (May 2025):
Following the success of the “March at FUISA” called by the Antigua Orden Dominicana and Santiago Matías, a senator nicknamed “Cholitín” introduced a hate speech bill. The legislator himself withdrew the bill days later.
Source: Listín Diario, 05/12/2025 https://listindiario.com/la-republica/20250512/cholitin-retira-proyecto-ley-sobre-discurso-odio_857311.html
7. International Resonance AP News:
One of the legislative attempts gained international coverage, specifically in the Associated Press, which published a report highlighting the bill and the citizen protests it sparked.
Source: AP News https://apnews.com/article/dominican-republic-press-freedom-bill-protest-40053d8a59d9a7917f7b964bba20c822
8. Article 310 of the New Penal Code (August 2025):
Communicator and doctor Ricardo Nieves published an opinion column in Listín Diario criticizing Article 310 of the new penal code, which criminalizes “contempt” toward a public official including expressions such as calling a civil servant “inefficient.” The penalty prescribed is up to three years in prison.
Source: Listín Diario, August 14, 2025 https://listindiario.com/puntos-de-vista/20250814/codigo-penal-ultrajante-articulo-310_870093.html
The problem is that this agenda can no longer conceal its origins. When those most aggressively pushing it are precisely the actors who were exposed for having been partners or allies of the financiers of terrorist gangs gangs formally classified as such by Washington the question of their real motivations answers itself.
It was into this landscape that Leah Campos arrived. A diplomat who knows firsthand what censorship looks like: the very same Dominican business interests now pushing gag laws tried to silence her when she began speaking about USAID. Her visits to digital media outlets were not coincidental scheduling. They were deliberate decisions.
From the official account of the United States Embassy, she published her words unfiltered: “Alternative media are setting the agenda in the conversation. The Trump administration recognizes the value and importance of alternative media in the pursuit of freedom.” She then added something that, in the Dominican context, sounds like a warning: “I was thrilled to visit the leading alternative media platform in the Dominican Republic to celebrate our shared commitment to freedom of expression and against the censorship that destroys liberty and discourse!”
At Somos Pueblo, she was even more direct. She described what occurred in the United States during the Biden era as “a disturbing time in which the mainstream media colluded with the Administration to censor, indoctrinate, and crush the opposition,” and noted that the American people responded by turning to independent sources. The parallel was transparent.
What the Traditional Media Did Not Cover
The fact that the major traditional Dominican media systematically ignored these visits is not an informational anomaly. It is the confirmation of the argument that digital communicators have been making for years: that the traditional media system is colluding with the political and business actors who have their own reasons to fear digital freedom of expression.
And they are right to fear it. The ambassador of the world’s foremost power chose their studios not the traditional ones. She spoke to their audiences not to those of the establishment. And what she said was, in essence, that what is happening here already happened there, and that the result was the defeat of those who bet on censorship.
There is something that smells wrong in this story, and it is not only the political opportunism of those pushing gag laws. It is the possibility that behind the resistance to resolving the Haitian migration crisis, behind the silence regarding the businessmen who financed terrorist gangs, and behind the persecution of those who asked the uncomfortable questions, there lies a network of interests that never wanted the crisis resolved — because the crisis itself was the business, a business fed by terrorism.
The Haitian businessmen sanctioned by Canada should return to their country to rebuild what they helped destroy. The questions about their Dominican partners remain officially unanswered. The missing children remain without a front-page headline in the outlets that do have the resources to investigate.
And meanwhile, a diplomat tours the digital studios that no one in power wanted her to visit.
That, in itself, is already a news story.
This article is an opinion analysis based on official public statements from the United States Embassy in the Dominican Republic and on matters of public record.
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