Government to build new ditch on Bolivia’s border to curb migration

The government announced on Saturday the construction of a new ditch on the northern border with Bolivia to curb the massive arrival of irregular migrants, mostly Venezuelans, amid a humanitarian crisis without precedent in recent years.
“It is a new ditch that goes parallel to the border with Bolivia and also parallel to a ditch that already exists on the Bolivian side, but did not exist on the Chilean side,” interior minister Rodrigo Delgado explained.
The objective of the new ditch, Delgado said, “is to have greater control capacity for criminal gangs that want to pass in vehicles or people who want to enter Chile clandestinely.”
It is 300 meters of furrow, which will begin to be excavated next week north of another 600-meter ditch that was built five years ago at the Border Crossing of Colchane, a town overwhelmed since the crisis began a year ago.
The north has been mired in a strong migration crisis for a year with the massive arrival of people through clandestine crossings, the collapse of small border towns, the holding of marches against migration and xenophobic attacks.
The inclement altiplanic steps continue to form the main route of irregular entry to Chile, which remains one of the most attractive countries to migrate within Latin America due to its political and economic stability, despite the pandemic and the social crisis of 2019.
The government decreed on February 17 the State of Exception, which in practice implies a militarization, and renewed it this week for 15 more days until March 17.
The measure will apply to the provinces of Arica, Parinacota, Tamarugal and El Loa and will end six days after the president-elect, Gabriel Boric, takes office As the military deployment has already been declared twice by the Piñera government, if Boric wants a new extension — something that has not yet been defined — he will need the endorsement of Parliament.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned last December that about 500 Venezuelan refugees and migrants, including children, cross daily through irregular border crossings between Bolivia and Chile and arrive in the country “after several days without eating, with dehydration, hypothermia and altitude sickness.”
So far this year, at least three people have already died trying to cross the border and more than twenty since the massive flow began in February 2021.
In Chile there are 1.4 million migrants, equivalent to more than 7% of the population, and Venezuelans are the most numerous, followed by Peruvians, Haitians and Colombians.

Original source in Spanish