Day One: Six Decrees and a Wall
Hours after taking the oath of office in Valparaíso’s Congress building, José Antonio Kast stood before Army commander Pedro Varela and delivered an instruction that echoed across the region. He ordered the military to collaborate in building physical barriers along the Bolivian border to stop irregular migration — and told Varela to start immediately, without waiting for the decrees to be published in the official gazette. Chile immigration policy took its sharpest turn in decades on Wednesday, as the country’s most conservative president since the return to democracy signed three migration-focused decrees on his first night in power. This is part of The Rio Times’ comprehensive coverage of Latin American financial markets and economic developments.
The first decree establishes a National Border Closure Policy targeting the most vulnerable stretch of Chile’s frontier with Bolivia. The second appoints retired Vice Admiral Alberto Soto as a presidential commissioner for the northern macro-zone with sweeping powers to coordinate the armed forces, police, and investigative agencies. The third launches the Shield Frontier Plan, a four-pillar strategy encompassing physical barriers up to five meters high, motion sensors, surveillance drones with facial recognition and infrared cameras, thermal radar, and biometric checkpoints.
Chile Immigration Crackdown in Context
The measures respond to what Kast’s coalition calls a national emergency. Chile’s immigrant population has doubled since 2017, and official data show 337,000 foreigners currently living in the country without required documentation. The rise in irregular migration has coincided with increases in homicides, kidnappings, and extortions that authorities attribute largely to transnational criminal organizations operating through the porous northern border. Kast campaigned on deporting all 337,000 undocumented migrants and won a decisive second-round victory in December with close to 60% of the vote against communist candidate Jeannette Jara.
The remaining three decrees signed on Wednesday cover a comprehensive state audit of the outgoing Boric administration, the reactivation of stalled investment projects worth $16 billion, and reconstruction efforts in the Valparaíso, Ñuble, and Bío Bío regions. Each ministry has been given 90-day deadlines to implement changes, including legal modifications to the rules governing the use of force at borders and reforms to immigration regulations designed to eliminate incentives for irregular entry.
A Right-Wing Shift With Regional Echoes
Kast’s inauguration drew a guest list that mapped Latin America’s rightward trajectory. Presidents Javier Milei of Argentina, Rodrigo Paz of Bolivia, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, and Santiago Peña of Paraguay attended, alongside Spain’s King Felipe VI, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, and U.S. Undersecretary of State Christopher Landau. Absent were leftist leaders Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico and Gustavo Petro of Colombia. Brazil’s Lula also stayed away — Brazilian media linked his absence to the confirmed attendance of Flávio Bolsonaro, his likely opponent in October’s presidential election.
Kast’s cabinet has already drawn opposition fire. Two ministers served as lawyers for Augusto Pinochet, whose 1973–1990 dictatorship left over 3,200 dead and disappeared, and the new minister of women’s affairs is an anti-abortion activist. In his balcony address to thousands of supporters outside La Moneda, Kast framed his presidency in existential terms: the country needs an emergency government, he said, and that is exactly what it will get. The question for Chile — and for the region watching closely — is whether emergency governance can coexist with the democratic norms that Kast has pledged to uphold.