Chile accuses Bolivia of “not making any effort” to contain the crossing of migrants on the border

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The presidential delegate of Tarapacá, Miguel Ángel Quezada, has accused Bolivia this Thursday of “not making any effort” to prevent the crossing of migrants at the shared border, amid the migratory crisis that the Chilean region is experiencing.

In an interview granted to Radio Cooperativa, he stressed that Sucre has not cooperated with Santiago to control the irregular entry of migrants -especially Venezuelans- in the north of the country and, at the same time, he pointed out that “there is a lot of help from the so-called ‘coyotes’ on the other side of the border.

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Thus, he justified the installation of a Carabineros camp in Colchane, announced on Wednesday by the Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Delgado. The objective in doubling the police presence in the area is to ensure that the agents guard the area in shifts. “We have 300 kilometers of border with Bolivia, and Bolivia makes no effort to stop people from crossing,” he insisted.

In Quezada’s opinion, migration control is “a challenge for South America,” and he clarified that the Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrés Allamand, by order of the President, Sebastián Piñera, works “together with other countries” and “inline of collaboration” in this regard.

However, and given that most migrants crossing into Chile are Venezuelans, he has called for “going to the origin of all this, which is the social, economic and political crisis of the dictatorship of (Venezuelan President Nicolás) Maduro”.

Several dozen people took to the streets of Iquique on Saturday to protest against illegal migration and burned the belongings of Venezuelan migrants, including baby carriages, for example. The protest took place a day after Carabineros evicted migrants from a local square.

In this sense, Quezada has pointed out that the fire “is not a reflection of what the people of Tarapacá are”. “It is a crisis that neither the people of Tarapacá nor the Chileans created, and we have to unite around a solution, which must also involve having laws (…) we have to enter into a discussion regarding what we want for Chile on the issue of migration”, he concluded.