MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile: Boric launches new phase of border patrolling program

Boric envisions a Constitutional reform to streamline and make permanent the deployment of the Armed Forces at the borders

Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced a major constitutional reform to strengthen border security and combat irregular migration. He made those remarks on Tuesday during a visit to the border town of Colchane in the Tarapacá region, where he also presented the progress of the Integrated Border System (Sifrón).

A project launched in 2023 under the Northern Joint Command, combining military presence with state-of-the-art technology, Sifrón entailed an investment of over US$13 million. It “combines the work of military personnel in the field with a substantial improvement in technology for detecting, identifying, and recording the entry of people through unauthorized crossings,” Boric explained.

Chile's Northern Macrozone (Arica and Parinacota, Tarapacá, and Antofagasta regions) has been overwhelmed by waves of migrants, mostly Venezuelan, Peruvian, Haitian, and Colombian citizens. Colchane, on the border with Bolivia and around 2,000 kilometers north of Santiago at an altitude of 3,700 meters, has lost nearly 1,000 residents since 2021 from a total of 1,700.

After completing Sifrón's Phase I, consisting of the acquisition of 52 vehicles (trucks, vans, motorcycles) to improve patrol deployment, the Chiiklean Government is moving on to Phase 2, buying monitoring cameras and setting up Border Observation Posts (POF, as per its acronym in Spanish).

Phase III will involve the purchase of drones, plus a full operating system, among other measures.

Boric's administration highlighted that the border protection policy, driven by this investment, has had a strong impact, helping to reduce irregular entries by 48% when comparing 2024 with 2021 (a period when irregular entries had seen an increase of over 700% from 2019 to 2021).

The President also envisions a Constitutional reform to streamline and make permanent the deployment of the Armed Forces at the borders, given that the current steps require Congressional approval and a review every three months. The reform will allow the Armed Forces to be deployed through a Supreme Decree and for as long as deemed necessary, granting them specific powers in border areas, including the ability to carry out identity checks and searches, make arrests in flagrante delicto (in the act of committing a crime), and collaborate with the PDI (Chilean Investigative Police) without constant Congressional re-endorsements.