About 50 migrants who wanted to leave Chile were stationed across the northern border with Peru this summer, and some of them were temporarily banned from crossing. Peruvian President José Gehry announced that he would declare a state of emergency at the border “in the face of the risk of unauthorized entry of migrants that could threaten the security of citizens,” and his Foreign Ministry reported the creation of a binational commission for migration cooperation with Chile, “in the midst of tensions caused by the arrival of migrants in the border area seeking to cross the country.” When there are 16 days left until the second round of the Chilean presidential elections, Republican José Antonio Cast, who has been threatened with the expulsion of all his papers if he reaches La Moneda, as opinion polls indicate, broadcast a video with a harsh tone in which President Gabriel Buric came to the northern city of Arica to “personally take office” of the “complicated” situation. For illegal immigrants, they said: “They had 103 days to leave the country voluntarily.”
Kast, who has focused his presidential campaign on security, immigration control and the economy, has spent weeks warning the 336,000 illegal immigrants living in Chile that they can voluntarily leave from here until March 2026, and if they win the election, as shown in the polls, they will be inspected, expelled and unable to re-enter the South American country. In a letter addressed to President Buric, the far-right candidate warned of the “very complicated situation” on the northern border with Peru. “It is so dangerous that we must take a plane today from Punta Arenas to Arica and carry out this mission in person,” I say. In addition, they warned illegal immigrants that if they ever wanted to enter Chile through the door, they would have no shortage of violations in our nation. He added: “If I do not sell voluntarily, I must leave after I assume the presidency, with what I own, with what I own.”
The President of Peru, José Gehry, announced on social media that he would declare a state of emergency on the border with Chile “to generate calm in the face of the risk of unauthorized entry of migrants that could threaten the security of citizens” in his country. Peruvian Foreign Minister Hugo de Zella also reported on contacts with Chile and the formation of a bilateral committee for cooperation in the field of migration with Chile, which will begin its work this month, dedicated to “solving problems of cooperation between the two countries.”
The Minister of Public Security, Luis Cordero, announced that the migrant gatherings produced this coming season in Arica were produced because they want to leave the country and face difficulties in entering Peru. “These people fell into the Chilean border sector. Some of them were involved in disrupting traffic there,” he noted, announcing that the Carabineros had assisted the area with agents monitoring public order. Also referring to Kast, he expressed the importance of “avoiding treating people as political means or resources. People cannot be used as a means to generate election controversy when in fact the country’s central goal is to prevent a humanitarian crisis.”
There was a group of migrants leaving the place, which is expected to be possible due to Kast’s strict warnings against irregulars, and Cordero noted that at the moment, there is a “natural flow out.” He added: “The main problem is directed at us now from the Chilean side, only because there are some demands that have been made from the Peruvian side.” The representative of the northern region in question, Vlado Mirosevic, from the Liberal Party, planned that in the face of the reinforcements offered by the Peruvian president on the border with Chile, a humanitarian corridor could be created in Arica, so that these migrants, “especially all the Venezuelans who are in Chile, but want to leave the country, can travel through a corridor, from where they accept from Peru, they can now pass through Ecuador and finally arrive in Venezuela.”