Photo provided by the Chilean Presidency of Chilean President Gabriel Boric (c) with residents of the town of Colchane, in the Tarapacá region (Chile).Chilean Presidency (Chilean Presidency/EFE)
The President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, will attend the XXVIII. th edition of the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to address an issue that the region could not tackle collectively: irregular immigration between Latin American countries, particularly Venezuela. The left-wing president has said so on the tour to Chile’s northern border, which he resumed this Wednesday after suspending it last week to travel to Santiago and announce his cabinet adjustment, only to celebrate a year in office remember. “Our goal is that everyone who enters the country illegally [a Chile] it can be diverted from where it came from, and that requires a high-level diplomatic conversation. And I begin this effort with President Luis Arce [de Bolivia] so that we can face it at Latin American level,” assured the left-wing president in reference to this appointment, which will take place on March 24-25.
Boric has taken on this issue in the Tarapacá region, an area in Chile that is particularly in demand due to the arrival of migrants. It is the main land link with the rest of the continent and is home to Colchane, the border crossing point with Bolivia. Since Chile has the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Andes chain to the east, marking the long border with Argentina, this area has become the main gateway for irregular migration due to the existence of an enabled passage coexisting with a border that is difficult to control. In an interview with a local media outlet, the left-wing president said that although people enter via Bolivia, this country only accepts the return of Bolivians if the Chilean authorities take them back to the border. Regarding the Ibero-American summit, Boric assured: “We will meet with various friendly presidents of Latin America, with AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador, de México]with Alberto Fernandez [Argentina]with Xiomara Castro [Honduras]with Gustavo Petro [Colombia]with Arce, where one of the themes we are going to deal with is precisely that”.
600 soldiers on the northern border
Immigration control has become one of the most important issues for a government like Chile’s, which has hardened its position on the matter during its 12 months in office. In the Colchane area on the northern border, about 600 troops are currently deployed to help with migration and public order issues after a law sponsored by this government was passed. One of Boric’s activities as part of this tour was precisely to verify on the ground the presence of the armed forces in this area. “They managed to sort out the immigration situation, identify migrants more rigorously, but no doubt many challenges remain,” Boric said. “We have to improve the infrastructure of the border crossing and also take care of Pica [otra localidad de la zona]. Because when you press your hand into Colchane, the burreros [que trafican droga] You can try finding new routes a little further south,” he added.
The 37-year-old president cited international organized crime invading this area of Chilean territory. “I had a very delicate meeting with the prosecutor, the Carabineros and the PDI last week in the city of Alto Hospicio [la policía] to address the challenges against organized criminal gangs that intend to establish themselves in our country and that in some cases have had a certain level of insertion,” he said in reference to the so-called Tren de Aragua, the bloody criminal gang of Venezuelan origins. ” “We will pursue them relentlessly. I want criminals to be afraid, not citizens. And we have different strategies for that,” Boric said of a law against organized crime that will be debated by Congress in the coming weeks.
Immigration is a latent issue on Chile’s political agenda. Interior Minister Carolina Tohá was a guest on the commission investigating the situation in Congress in the north. Boric’s chief of staff told parliamentarians that between 2013 and 2022, Chile ordered around 20,900 expulsions of people who entered the territory secretly, which had not been possible. Tohá explained that the problem was the cumbersome procedures for implementing the measure, which the evictees used to make themselves untraceable. According to a statement recently made by Director of Migration Luis Eduardo Thayer, this government has so far carried out 140 deportations at a cost of about $3,200 per person.
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