On Chile’s northernmost border with Peru, navy excavators carve a deep trench throughout the windswept pampa, a part of a hardline effort to tighten management of migration and cross-border crime beneath President José Antonio Kast.
John Bartlett/NPR
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John Bartlett/NPR
ARICA, Chile—Out on the vast open plain on Chile’s northernmost shoreline, mud billows within the cool breeze which sweeps throughout the pampa.
In entrance of a row of concrete markers tracing the border with Peru, two sandy-yellow Chilean navy excavators crawl alongside a deep trench, digging three metres down earlier than swinging sharply to dump bucketloads of earth right into a rising embankment.
A couple of hundred yards throughout the pampa from the place Chilean troopers patrol the boundary, stern-faced, the Peruvian border police sit beneath wind-torn blue awnings, eyeing the Chileans warily.
This barrier is newly inaugurated far-right President José Antonio Kast’s reply to the migration disaster that propelled him to energy in December’s runoff election, the place he gained 58% of the vote. It additionally echoes President Trump’s pledges to construct a wall alongside the U.S.–Mexico border, a key ingredient of his immigration agenda.
In the course of the marketing campaign, Kast repeatedly threatened the 336,000 migrants dwelling illegally in Chile, in line with official estimates, with expulsion.
To this point, he has deported simply 40 folks 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 go to to this frontier simply 5 days after assuming the presidency.
Kast, an ultra-conservative Catholic father-of-nine, has made a profession on the acute fringes of Chilean politics along with his hardline views. Over the past 5 years, he has made unlawful immigration – and the general public safety 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 Cristián Sayes, President Kast’s delegate on this, Chile’s northernmost administrative area.
“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, smuggling, and human trafficking,” mentioned Sayes.
Chilean President Jose Antonio Kast walks previous diggers alongside the northern border on the Chacalluta border crossing in Arica, Chile, March 2026.
Esteban Felix/AP
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Esteban Felix/AP
This ditch will probably be 11 kilometres lengthy. One other, increased up within the mountains, will stretch for seven kilometres, and additional south on the border with Bolivia, two extra ditches are being dug.
Tank traps dug throughout a time of heightened political tensions within the Seventies strafe the panorama both facet of the freeway, and a bit of desert alongside from the place the ditch is being dug remains to be laid with anti-tank mines from the period.
In March, Kast flew as much as Arica, the sleepy desert city on the border with Peru, to announce the initiation of his ‘border protect’ plan.
The plan goals to seal weak stretches of the 1,200-kilometre border Chile shares with Peru and Bolivia throughout its three northernmost areas within the Atacama Desert.The primary part contains a number of brief trench sections alongside essentially the most uncovered components of the frontier. Surveillance gear will observe within the subsequent part, whereas the unique proposal additionally known as for five-metre partitions in some areas.
“In addition to ditches, fences and walls, there will be thermal and infrared cameras, sensors, radars and drones with facial recognition cameras – all operating 24 hours a day,” defined Sayes.
However the wave of unlawful migration throughout this border might already be a factor of the previous as unlawful entries have been steadily declining.
“In 2024, we had around 2,460 attempts, but in 2025, there was a significant decrease to 1,746,” mentioned Prefect Inspector José Contreras Hernández, the regional head of Chile’s investigative police drive.
“The most significant increase we have seen is actually in attempts by people to leave or try to leave the national territory irregularly,” says Contreras Hernández, attributing the exodus to migration insurance policies and the change of presidency.
Already within the first 4 months of this 12 months, border patrols have thwarted practically 500 makes an attempt to go away the nation illegally in Arica y Parinacota – in comparison with simply 33 in the entire of 2024.
Sayes says that the border deterrents will probably be constantly reviewed: “This is a constant and dynamic job, we will have to keep an eye on where traffickers and contrabandists are crossing, and we will have to maintain the trench so that it doesn’t crumble or fill with sand.”
Already, two Bolivian residents had been detained on one other part of the border trench for attempting to fill within the ditch to make it satisfactory.
Getting into the nation illegally will not be a criminal offense in Chile, and the Kast authorities has already despatched two payments to congress which might criminalise unlawful entry, in addition to restrict immigrants’ entry to social safety advantages.
But doubts stay over whether or not digging ditches alongside brief stretches of Chile’s greater than 4,800 miles of porous borders will do a lot to curb the movement of migrants, medicine, or contraband. And with desert winds already blowing sand again into the trenches, the query is now not simply how far this barrier will lengthen — however whether or not it can cease anybody in any respect.
