Chile Expulsions Climb as Illegal Entries Fall 86%

Chile carried out 1,874 expulsions of foreigners by early October 2026, and the numbers on the other side of the ledger are striking. A police report says expulsions rose 76% from January to July compared with a year earlier, while detections of irregular entries fell 86%, from 8,610 to 1,175.

That’s a steep drop. It came alongside the country’s tenth expulsion flight under President José Antonio Kast, a conservative who made faster removals a pillar of his government.

The Latest Flight

The most recent flight left Santiago airport at 1:25 a.m. Chile time on Saturday, 10 October. It carried 56 people to their home countries: 21 Colombians, 20 Bolivians and 15 Ecuadorians. Officials removed 45 by administrative order and 11 by court order. Chile counts it as the tenth expulsion flight since Kast took office on 11 March.

The pace has stayed steady. On 30 September, a flight to Peru and Colombia carried 32 Colombians and eight Peruvians, according to the National Migration Service. By that date, expulsions in 2026 had reached 1,764, including 1,468 after Kast took office, the service said. Earlier, on 24 May, a flight carrying 80 people brought the running total to 780.

What the Numbers Show

The police report records 1,330 expulsions from January to July: 1,183 administrative and 147 judicial. Colombians accounted for 549, the largest nationality group during that period.

The data leave gaps. The reports don’t give a nationality breakdown for all 1,874 expulsions, and they don’t say how many people had criminal records. That leaves a fair question unanswered: how many removals involved serious offenders, and how many involved people whose only violation was entering or staying without authorization?

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

Security and the U.S. Relationship

Chile is a close U.S. security partner and the only Latin American country in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, which lets Chileans travel to the United States without a visa. On 22 September, the government confirmed it had joined the U.S.-led Shield of the Americas anti-cartel coalition, launched by President Donald Trump in March. The coalition’s framework allows voluntary coordination, including intelligence sharing, joint training and assistance with maritime surveillance. Chile’s move ties its security policy to Washington, alongside its migration agenda.

Legislative Next Steps

The lower house passed a government bill on 19 October to speed up expulsions further. The Senate hasn’t voted on it yet. No one knows whether the current pace, roughly one flight every few weeks, would continue if the bill becomes law. Chile ranked third of 14 in The Rio Times Latin America Power Index, with 63.6 points in the October 2026 edition.

Why This Matters:

The figures give Chile’s government its strongest argument: enforcement appears to be changing behavior at the border, with irregular-entry detections falling from 8,610 to 1,175. For a government that campaigned on order, that’s measurable progress, achieved through existing legal channels—administrative and judicial orders—rather than blanket measures.

But the data gaps matter. Without a full nationality breakdown or a count of removals involving criminal records, it’s hard to judge how well enforcement targets the greatest risks. The Senate vote on the faster-expulsion bill will test whether lawmakers want to widen those powers, and whether the rule-of-law safeguards attached to each administrative or court order hold up as removals increase. Chile’s closer alignment with Washington on security adds another layer: border control, anti-cartel cooperation and its visa-free standing with the United States now form part of one strategic picture.