SANTIAGO, Chile–Standing on a corner in downtown Santiago, the afternoon heat gleaming off the skyscrapers overhead, a man approaches. He’s middle aged, in stained khakis and a worn tee. “Where are you from,” he asks, offering a thumbs up as we tell him.
Mexico and the U.S. “Good,” he says in Spanish, adding, “Venezuelans, bad.” He then positions his arms as if pointing a rifle skyward and barks out, “Kast will get rid of them.”
The Venezuelans, Los Venezolanos, the name itself carries a certain stigma here, spoken almost as an epithet to convey the disdain and frustration of Chileans exasperated by a sense of rising insecurity and decreasing opportunity.
On Dec. 14, Chileans elected the far-right candidate and former lawmaker José Antonio Kast, an avowed champion of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Thanks to a recently passed law making voting obligatory in Chile, he takes office as the president with the highest vote count in Chile’s history.
Kast, whose father was a member of Hitler’s Nazi Party in his native Germany and an officer in the Third Reich’s military, has torn a page from the Trump playbook, promising to expel from the country millions of newly-arrived immigrants—many from Venezuela, others from Colombia and Haiti—upon taking office.
“The most successful year for expulsions will be 2026, after we take over the government,” promised Kast in a recent debate with his rival, Jeanette Jara of the Communist Party. Jara served as the Minister of Labor under the outgoing president, Gabriel Boric.
Chile has experienced a massive influx of immigrants, with the country’s foreign-born population doubling over the past five years, from just above 4% to nearly 9% in 2025. And while crime statistics have remained relatively stable—indeed, Chile is one of the safest countries in Latin America—many here insist they feel less secure.
An Ipsos poll in October found 63% of respondents citing safety and security as among voters’ top priorities, higher than in Mexico and Colombia, despite homicide rates in these countries being four-times higher than in Chile.
“They burned him alive,” says our cab driver, Rodrigo (who asked we only use his first name), describing a recent attack that targeted a family in a working-class suburb outside the capital. “That never used to happen here,” he adds. Asked if the culprits were Venezuelans, he admits he doesn’t know, before pivoting to Tren del Aragua, the Venezuelan crime syndicate at the center of geopolitical stirrings from DC to Santiago.
President Trump has all but declared war on the group, citing its presence in U.S. cities as a basis for draconian deportation policies. He has also tied it to Venezuelan autocrat Nicolas Maduro as justification for what looks increasingly like a campaign aimed at regime change.
“Today, Venezuelans are almost a third of all legally registered foreigners living in Chile,” says Professor Hugo Fruhling, founder of the Center for the Study of Public Security at the University of Chile. “Many cases of violence have been attributed to them.”
According to Fruhling, an expert on public security issues across Latin America, early waves of migrants from Venezuela and neighboring countries starting a decade ago were wealthier and better educated. More recent arrivals, he says, are generally poorer, with fewer means to sustain themselves and their families.
Their arrival, beginning around the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, coincided with a period of anemic economic growth in Chile and a shortage of available housing. Many fell into the shadows as a result.
“It is not only that some of them could be related to criminal groups in their own countries,” explains Fruhling, “but the fact is that it is difficult for many of them to live via legitimate means here.”
One result of all this has been the emergence of campamentos, illegal settlements across Santiago and other parts of the country, communities typically governed by internal forms of self-rule and where police presence is minimal if not completely absent. Many are populated almost entirely by immigrants.
Just two days after the election, officials in Maipú, located on the southwest extremes of Santiago, announced the dismantling of one settlement home to nearly 400 people, including some 200 children and adolescents. Ninety four percent of residents in the encampment are immigrants, according to reports.
Fruhling says for many Chileans, such places have become a visible symbol of the consequences of mass migration. “When people see all this, they attribute it to Venezuelans,” he explains. “But obviously it is an exaggeration.”
Beyond expulsions, another key feature of Kast’s campaign platform—and one that resonated widely with Chilean voters—was his tough-on-crime approach to criminals, and by extension immigrants. During his campaign Kast twice visited El Salvador to tour the notorious CECOT prison built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, where the U.S. has sent hundreds of deported immigrants.
Titled the Plan Implacable, or Iron Fist in English, Kast’s proposal paints a nightmarish picture of foreign criminals walking the streets as Chileans remain indoors “paralyzed by fear.” Kast has promised longer sentences and the construction of 100,000 new prison spaces in the country, with cells deprived of windows, electricity, and all access to the outside world.
According to Fruhling, several factors complicate Kast’s repeated promises to expel migrants en masse, including the unwillingness of countries like Venezuela to take them back. And while Trump paid countries including El Salvador to accept deportees, Chile lacks the financial resources available to the US. That leaves imprisonment as the only option.
Chile’s prison population currently stands at around 60,000. Many anticipate that number to grow significantly in coming years. Some, including local Chilean activists, fear Kast’s criminal dragnet could eventually expand to ensnare them as well in a return to the darker days of the Pinochet era.
Fruhling says of all Kast’s promises, incarceration is the lowest hanging fruit.
“That is going to be one of the more easily approachable goals for Kast, and where it will be easier to show results,” he said. “You build a place where you put all of them, you capture them, and until they are received by their country of origin, you place them there.”
Manuel Ortiz contributed reporting for this story. It was produced with support from Global Exchange and Social Focus.