The Trump administration on Monday quietly rescinded an order that had blocked a major Dominican sugar producer with political ties to President Trump from shipping sugar to the United States because of allegations of forced labor at the company.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection modified a “withhold release order” that had been issued in 2022 for raw sugar and sugar products made by the Central Romana Corporation, blocking exports to the United States from the company. The Customs website now lists the order as “inactive.”
Labor right groups expressed frustration at the change, saying that Central Romana, whose sugar had been sold in the United States under the Domino brand, had not significantly improved its labor practices.
“We haven’t seen a significant enough change to warrant modification,” said Allie Brudney, a senior staff attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab, which has been monitoring working conditions on Dominican sugar farms. “This is a disappointing outcome, but we will continue to support workers in their fight for better conditions.”
A U.S. official, who declined to be named because the person was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the decision to rescind the rule and allow the company to begin exporting had not followed established processes. The official cited Central Romana’s powerful ownership, and said that the decision was most likely made at the top levels of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Hilton Beckham, an assistant commissioner of public affairs for Customs and Border Protection, confirmed that the order had been modified, saying that the decision followed “documented improvements to labor standards, verified by independent sources.” She declined to disclose those sources, citing confidentiality reasons.
Ms. Beckham added that “Central Romana has taken action to address the concerns outlined in the initial WRO,” referring to the withhold release order, and that customs officials remained “committed to enforcing U.S. laws prohibiting forced labor and will continue to closely monitor compliance.”
Central Romana said in a statement that the company was “pleased to learn that the administration of the U.S. government has reviewed all the shared evidence and agreed that there is no basis to continue” the withhold release order. Over the past two years, it had provided U.S. officials with independent audits from outside organizations and other documentation of its practices, it said.
Central Romana, the largest landholder and private employer in the Dominican Republic, is partly owned by the Fanjul family, which has been influential in U.S. politics for decades.
In 2024, the Fanjul Corporation gave a $1 million donation to Make America Great Again, a political action committee supporting Mr. Trump, as well as a $413,000 donation to the Republican National Committee, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics. The corporation also made smaller donations to Democrats.
For decades, Central Romana has faced allegations from labor rights groups that it subjected its workers to poor labor conditions. The Biden administration banned imports from the company in 2022, saying that it had information indicating that the company had taken advantage of vulnerable workers, improperly withheld their wages, forced them to do excessive overtime and created abusive working and living conditions.
Civil society groups have also complained of Central Romana forcibly evicting families from homes, threatening workers who complain about working conditions and providing dilapidated housing without clean water or electricity.
Central Romana has publicly defended its practices, saying that it had been investing for years to improve the living conditions of its employees and that it provides the best conditions in the industry.
Many of the company’s employees are Haitian migrants, some of whom were born on Central Romana farms. Because the Dominican Republic does not offer these workers citizenship, they are uniquely vulnerable, unable to seek other employment and in fear of deportation, civil society groups say.
A congressional delegation that visited the Dominican Republic and met with workers last summer said that the country had made progress toward addressing some of the worst incidents, including child labor and human trafficking, but also that abuses in the sector continued.
A study put out by the Department of Labor in September found continued evidence of abusive working conditions in the sector. The study said that following the 2022 ban, other Dominican sugar farms had replaced Central Romana as a main source of exports to the United States, but that those farms most likely had similar issues with forced labor.
In a news conference Monday, the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, said that business was now “back to normal.”
“Central Romana can now export like it’s always done,” Mr. Abinader said, calling it “positive news.”
Asked about why the restrictions had been lifted, Mr. Abinader said it was “a decision of the American government. We were not involved in that decision.”
Central Romana is the largest sugar producer in the Dominican Republic, producing about 60 percent of the country’s sugar, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the 1980s, it was acquired by members of the Fanjul family, Cuban exiles who started sugar cane farms in Florida.
The Fanjuls were prominent donors to both Democrats and Republicans, including the Bushes, the Clintons and Marco Rubio when he was a Florida senator, before becoming Mr. Trump’s secretary of state. The Fanjul family, which also founded Florida Crystals Corporation, is a part owner of American Sugar Refining, the world’s largest sugar refinery, which sells sugar under brand names including Domino and C&H Sugar.
In 2023 and 2024, Central Romana disclosed that it had paid more than $1.1 million to lobby Congress, customs officials and others on issues in the sugar sector, including the 2022 ban over the forced labor allegations.
The Fanjuls tried to leverage their political ties to get the order reversed. In an August 2023 letter to Chris Dodd, a former senator who was then a special adviser to the U.S. Department of State, Alfonso Fanjul, the chief executive of Central Romana, said the order had caused “irreparable damage” to the company and his family’s reputation and was without basis.
Mr. Fanjul wrote that the company had carried out an extensive audit and concluded that there was no forced labor in its operations.
“Chris, we have been friends for a long time,” Mr. Fanjul wrote in the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times. “I am asking for your help in requesting CBP to lift its sanctions on our company, which not only impacts it but the financial well-being of our workers who are suffering as a result of the WRO.” (There is no evidence that Mr. Dodd intervened in the process.)
In a letter to U.S. officials last March, more than 30 human and labor rights organizations expressed concern over efforts by Central Romana to avoid remediating its labor practices under the government’s forced labor ban.
Workers had reported that the company’s efforts to fix conditions were “superficial” and that some improvements Central Romana had publicly announced, like providing health insurance and electricity for company housing, had been overstated and were still unavailable to large numbers of workers, the groups said.
“Nearly every person interviewed in December 2023 stated that if they were able to leave, they would,” the letter read.
In contrast, Central Romana’s efforts to modify the order through political pressure had been “substantial” and “deeply concerning,” the groups said.
“If this strategy proves successful for Central Romana, it will not only harm and disillusion workers in this case, but it will also undermine the efficacy” of forced labor enforcement more generally, the letter read.