Chile's MAGA-inspired border control

Dust blows across Chile’s northern pampa near Arica as Chilean military excavators dig a deep trench along the Peru border and build a rising embankment. Peruvian border police watch from nearby, wary of the new works. The barrier is presented as President Jose Antonio Kast’s response to a migration crisis that helped propel his election, with campaign promises to expel migrants living illegally in Chile. Kast has deported only a small number so far, despite threats during the campaign. The project is framed as restoring sovereignty and improving public security by enabling constant border control to stop illegal migration and confront drug trafficking and organized crime.

"Out on the wide open plain on Chile's northernmost coastline, dust billows in the cool breeze which sweeps across the pampa. In front of a row of concrete markers tracing the border with Peru, two sandy-yellow Chilean military excavators crawl along a deep trench, digging three metres down before swinging sharply to dump bucketloads of earth into a rising embankment. A few hundred yards across the pampa from where Chilean soldiers patrol the boundary, stern-faced, the Peruvian border police sit under wind-torn blue awnings, eyeing the Chileans warily."

"This barrier is newly inaugurated far-right President Jose Antonio Kast's answer to the migration crisis that propelled him to power in December's runoff election, where he won 58% of the vote. It also echoes President Trump's pledges to build a wall along the U.S.Mexico border, a key element of his immigration agenda. During the campaign, Kast regularly threatened the 336,000 migrants living illegally in Chile, according to official estimates, with expulsion. So far, he has deported just 40 people on a single outbound flight."

""We want to use excavators to build a sovereign Chile which has been undermined by illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and organized crime," he declared on a visit to this frontier just five days after assuming the presidency. Kast, an ultra-conservative Catholic father-of-nine, has made a career on the extreme fringes of Chilean politics with his hardline views. Over the last five years, he has made illegal immigration and the public security fears which have accompanied it his battleflag, drawing comparisons to President Trump."

""We have made 53.6% progress, which means about six kilometres in this area," says Cristian Sayes, President Kast's delegate in this, Chile's northernmost administrative region. "The ultimate goal is to have constant control of the border so that we can stop illegal migration once and for all, but also confront drug trafficking,"

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