(Bloomberg) — Peruvian President José Jerí said he is pushing ahead with plans to declare a state of emergency as migrants block the country’s southern border with Chile, from where undocumented foreigners are apparently fleeing ahead of a threatened crackdown on migration.
“Our borders must be respected,” Jerí said in an X post on Friday. “An extraordinary Cabinet meeting is being convened to declare, as previously announced, a state of emergency and thus reinforce surveillance efforts with the Armed Forces.”
Jerí added that immigration and police authorities will step up identity checks to ensure public safety, a move that follows rising political tensions as migrants leaving Chile for Peru prompt fears of a broader exodus.
According to Peruvian TV channel Canal N, dozens of undocumented migrants blocked the Tacna–Arica border crossing between Peru and Chile on Friday. The group demanded entry into Peru to travel on to their home countries, saying they were leaving Chile because of increasingly strict immigration policies, the outlet reported.
The disruption created lengthy traffic delays on both sides of the frontier.
Earlier on Friday, the regional governor of Tacna, Luis Torres, told RPP Noticias that there were between 70 and 80 Venezuelans stranded on the Chilean side of the border.
“They’ve even blocked the road — they’re not letting cars, trucks, or anything pass,” Torres said.
Chile’s leading presidential candidate, arch-conservative José Antonio Kast, recently visited the country’s border area and warned undocumented migrants to leave or face expulsion, prompting some to head north. The shift quickly drew attention in Peru, where Jerí announced plans for a state of emergency, which allows the military to assume some police functions and suspends certain civil liberties such as the right to assembly.
As Chile heads into a Dec. 14 runoff between Kast and communist rival Jeannette Jara, the country’s migration policies have taken center stage. Outgoing President Gabriel Boric, a leftist, deployed troops along the northern border in 2023, especially at the porous remote frontier with Bolivia, to try to block clandestine entries.
Close to 337,000 undocumented migrants were in Chile in 2023, according to the latest estimate from the country’s migration agency. The largest share are from Venezuela.
Kast, the son of German immigrants, has pledged the toughest migration crackdown in the country’s history, including criminalizing irregular entry.
“The migration crisis continues to escalate at the border with Peru, and President Boric has yet to respond,” Kast posted on X early Friday. “To the irregular immigrants in Chile, you have 103 days left to leave our homeland voluntarily.”
–With assistance from Marcelo Rochabrun and Matthew Malinowski.
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