Chile Expulsions Surge as Kast Tightens State Control

Chile had carried out 1,874 expulsions of foreigners by early October 2026, as President José Antonio Kast’s government made faster removals a pillar of its policy. Police reported that expulsions rose 76% in January to July compared with a year earlier. During the same period, detections of irregular entries fell 86%, from 8,610 to 1,175. The state counts removals and border detections, but the report doesn’t say how many people facing expulsion orders had criminal records.

The machinery of removal

At 1:25 a.m. Chile time on Saturday 10 October, the latest flight left Santiago airport with 56 people bound for their home countries: 21 Colombians, 20 Bolivians and 15 Ecuadorians. Authorities removed 45 by administrative order and 11 by court order. Chile counts this as the tenth expulsion flight since Kast took office on 11 March.

Police put expulsions from January to July at 1,330: 1,183 administrative and 147 judicial. Colombians made up the largest nationality group, with 549 expulsions in that period. The reports don’t provide a nationality breakdown for all 1,874 expulsions, and they don’t say how many people removed had criminal records. Key details about who the state is removing, and on what grounds, remain outside the figures provided.

The government has also arranged removals in groups. On 30 September, the National Migration Service said a flight to Peru and Colombia carried 32 Colombians and eight Peruvians. By then, the service said, expulsions in 2026 had reached 1,764, including 1,468 since Kast took office. A flight carrying 80 people on 24 May brought the total to 780.

People with valid residency in Chile aren’t affected by the removals; the orders target people facing administrative or judicial expulsion. Chile’s 2024 census counted 1,608,650 foreign-born residents, or 8.8% of the population. Venezuelans formed the largest group, at 669,408.

More power for the apparatus

Chile’s lower house passed a government bill to speed up expulsions further on 19 October. The Senate still hadn’t voted on it. The article says it wasn’t known whether flights would continue at a pace of one every few weeks if the bill became law. Lawmakers are using the legislative route to expand the state’s ability to remove people, even as the available figures leave out how many of those expelled had criminal records.

On 22 September, Chile also confirmed it had joined the U.S.-led Shield of the Americas anti-cartel coalition, launched by President Donald Trump in March. The coalition is described as a framework for voluntary coordination, including intelligence sharing, joint training and help with maritime surveillance. The article links Chile’s security policy to Washington alongside its migration agenda.

Chile is a close U.S. security partner and the only Latin American country in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. Chileans can travel to the United States under the program. The removals described in the report target people with expulsion orders, not those with valid residency in Chile.

The report describes no grassroots response, mutual-aid effort or community organizing. Instead, it follows government orders, police figures, flights and legislation: the institutions deciding who is removed, and the people whose lives those decisions govern.