SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia—Chile’s foreign minister Andrés Allamand stepped down from office on Feb. 6, amid accusations of abandoning his post as a migration crisis continues unfolding at the nation’s northern border.
Allamand hosted a meeting in Madrid on Feb. 3 as the Ibero-American secretary general, which was a red flag for Chilean officials.
Back in South America the country’s interior minister Rodrigo Delgado traveled to the remote Tarapaca desert region—where the migration problem is occurring—to address the need for increased security.
Undersecretary of foreign relations, Carolina Valdivia, will replace Allamand during the transitional periods between the administrations of outgoing President Sebastian Pinera and president elect Gabriel Boric.
Chamber of deputies member Jaime Naranjo called Allamand’s move a “remarkable abandonment of duties” and didn’t rule out the possibility of a constitutional accusation against the minister.
“He [Allamand] should’ve resigned as soon as he assumed an international office in Madrid, and not be an absent foreign minister,” fellow deputy Gabriel Ascencio said.
In the isolated desert town of Colchane on Chile’s northern border with Bolivia, illegal immigrants continue to cross freely due to a lack of security forces to patrol the vast area.
The crisis at the Chile–Bolivia border began gaining momentum near the end of 2020 as droves of migrants gathered near the dividing line, waiting for a chance to cross when police patrols were out of sight.
Many of the illegal immigrants are Venezuelans and Haitians.
Chileans have been protesting against the surge of migrants filtering down from the high desert, which has led to violent encounters between demonstrators, police, and immigrants.
On Jan. 30, more than 4,000 protesters took to the streets in the city of Iquique, demanding greater security at the country’s northern border near Colchane.
Physical altercations between demonstrators and an immigrant, along with a group of protesters destroying a tent camp near the beach, were reported.
During the march residents brandished signs reading, “Close borders now” and “Stop victimizing criminals.”
“They [migrants] do not respect the police,” Iquique resident and protester Jimena Ortiz said.
Fellow demonstrator Christian Guerra echoed Ortiz’s sentiment, “We are tired of indiscriminate immigration ... we Iquiquenos are bored with that.”
Responding to the recent accusations by locals that greater numbers of migrants are driving the rise in violent crime, the governor for the Tarapaca province, Jose Miguel Carvajal, said, “We cannot compare the migratory situation with the criminal situation, they are very different.”
This is the second incident involving clashes between migrants and residents in Iquique in only four months.
During a September protest last year, angry residents surrounded and burned a large migrant camp, occupied primarily by Venezuelans, amid clashes with the police.
Iquique, which is a small but important commercial coastal city, is the first major urban hub migrants reach after crossing the inhospitable desert beyond the border.
Chile has a population of just over 19 million and immigrants now account for more than 7 percent of the nation’s total inhabitants.
On Feb. 4, officials in Chile and Bolivia held a video conference to address the security challenges at their shared border.
Three days before the conference, Delgado remarked that Bolivia is by far the country that “collaborates the least” when it comes to policing the nation’s collective frontier.
