Activists on Twitter have been speaking out this morning (June 16) on policies recently implemented in the Dominican Republic: Policies that could lead to hundreds of thousands of people being deported to Haiti on June 17, the Associated Press reports.

This story involves a lot of intersections of the country's history of racism and colorism, but essentially because of a previous ruling in 2013, countless individuals of Haitian descent born after 1929 — most of whom were born in the Dominican Republic — were stripped of their citizenship, effectively making them illegal immigrants in the only country they've ever known.

While no mass deportations are officially happening yet, it's being reported that the country is preparing to do just that.

If you're just catching up to this story now, here's what you need to know:

Hundreds of thousands of people may be deported.

Because this hasn't gotten a lot of mainstream press attention, the exact number of people who will be effected is kind of hard to get: some reports say 100,000, others say 210, 000 people.

Either way, it's a lot of people and families who could end up being deported in what Dominican Today called "the most ambitious alien regularization plan ever seen, not only in the Dominican Republic, but throughout the continent."

That is, if they can't meet this deadline.

In the capital, the AP has reported that there are countless former-citizens lining up to try and remain in the country, part of a program the government set up to grant legal rights to stay in the country to people who could prove they have been in the Dominican Republic since before October 2011.

Those who are eligible are filling out a lot of complicated paperwork and are required to show identification and documents that they may not even have (often because of the rural areas they may have been born into or the government's own slow-moving bureaucracy.)

This is all part of a deeper, long-term racial conflict.

The relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti has been a contentious one for a long time. Culturally, colorism is common in the Dominican Republic, separating those who look more brown or ("morena") from those who are darker ("negra.")

And, as people of Haitian-descent often have darker skin, civil rights activists argue that this legislation speaks to a larger issue of racism, colorism and xenophobia in the country. The Nation reported earlier this week that signs are ominously pointing toward the deportations happening: "Dark-skinned Dominicans with Haitian facial features" are being detained from poor neighborhoods and that the government has solicited "up to three dozen large passenger buses" to use in the deportation process.

...And no one is talking about it.

This is a story that has been called "criminally underreported" in the mainstream media.

Activists on Twitter and beyond are still calling for more international attention.