In what was seen as an election-year appeal to Latino voters, a Democratic mayoral candidate, Gifford Miller, made his first trip to the Dominican Republic this week.

The City Council speaker and nine council colleagues joined a tour organized by Council Member Miguel Martinez of Manhattan. The objective of the trip, Mr. Martinez told Dominican reporters upon their arrival Tuesday, is to create a program to assist Dominicans who are deported from America.

“There needs to be more collaboration between the agencies, in this case the departments of police and immigration of both countries,” Mr. Miller told reporters at El Caribe, a leading Dominican daily newspaper, yesterday. “The United States sends the files of the deportees days before they arrive in the Dominican Republic. … They need to send the information not in the days before, but months before the person arrives here.”

The Dominican government and public have blamed growing crime in the Caribbean country on the more than 25,000 Dominicans who have been deported since stricter laws were enacted in 1996. Most of them were from New York. Among criminal deportees, the majority are people convicted in drug cases, but some have been booted for minor offenses such as jumping a turnstile or shoplifting. In New York, officials and community leaders have been lobbying for better treatment for Dominicans who are deported.

“We want to see what class of services the Dominican government is offering to reintegrate these individuals into society,” Mr. Martinez said in El Caribe, “especially those who were deported for crimes that are less serious, such as a traffic ticket.”

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security did not return calls yesterday requesting a comment.

The council members, joined by 14 business and local Dominican leaders, spent the past two days visiting with business leaders, and the country’s director of immigration, chief of police, and attorney general. Today they are scheduled to meet with the president, Leonel Fernandez. The council members on the trip are all paying their own way, according to Mr. Martinez’s office.

Some Dominican leaders reacted enthusiastically to the visit by Mr. Miller, who has already visited other countries with key New York constituencies, such as Israel and Ireland.

“Given the fact that it’s an election year, they should be going for the Dominican vote, and it’s important that they do this type of outreach and relationship building,” the director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Raquel Batista, said, noting that Mayor Bloomberg had already traveled to the Dominican Republic.