Chilean President José Antonio Kast, a hardline conservative who won the leadership of the country in a landslide last year, took his oath of office on Wednesday and immediately began to work fortifying the country’s northern border.
Kast won every Chilean state in the presidential election in December, running a campaign vowing policies that were tough on crime, cracked down on illegal immigration, and aligned Chile with global causes of freedom, in particular a strong relationship with the United States. He defeated former government minister Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party, in the race, and will succeed outgoing leftist Gabriel Boric, who defeated him in the 2021 presidential election.
Taking office on Wednesday, Kast delivered a speech in which he sternly condemned Boric’s poor performance and vowed to work efficiently to eliminate crime and government corruption. Kast at one point, however, also demanded that his audience respect the outgoing president as cheers of “imprison Boric!” erupted.
“They are handing us a country in worse conditions than we can imagine,” Kast said. “A country with weakened public finances. A country where organized crime and drug trafficking have advanced. A country where families feel abandoned by the state.”
He added as a caveat, “saying the country is in bad condition is not an excuse. We say it because Chile deserves to know the truth.”
Kast vowed to be “relentless with those who steal Chileans’ money, those who abuse power, those who use the state to enrich themselves – regardless of last name, party, or political sector.” This comment triggered the cheers of “imprison Boric!” to which Kast replied, “I ask for respect.”
“First the audits will come, but I ask for the respect demanded of this day, which is a historic day, a republican day, where we must conduct everything in order,” he scolded.
The audits came swiftly, as one of Kast’s first executive orders mandated the organization and execution of sweeping audits of government agencies. The order reportedly calls for a “Total Audit” of every federal government ministry and institution and the creation of a system to streamline the detection of irregularities in agency finances.
The executive orders signed on Wednesday also prioritized controlling the border. While Chile’s longest border is famously with Chile, that border is mountainous and often less of a problem for illegal entry than the northern border with Bolivia. Like much of South America, Chile has experienced a surge in illegal immigration in the past decade, much of it from socialist Venezuela.
In addition to the wave of anti-socialist refugees that total in the millions around the world, Chile has documented an increase in criminal activity from terrorist organizations such as the Tren de Aragua gang. In 2024, a prominent Venezuelan dissident in the country, Ronald Ojeda, was found dead in a suitcase after going missing. Chilean authorities linked his death to the Tren de Aragua and Boric, despite being a leftist himself, suggested publicly that deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro had a hand in his assassination.
Kast signed an executive order establishing an agency on Wednesday dedicated to closing the northern border and declaring the most vulnerable parts of that border a military operation zone. It established a “national policy of border closure” and empowered both police and military to stop illicit human and other trafficking.
The Chilean news outlet Bio Bio reported that Kast’s executive orders “increase the military presence in critical sectors of the north, improve vigilance through drones and optronic sensors, and strengthens communications in the border zone.”
A separate executive order established a plan that Kast calls “Border Shield,” a four-pronged approach to improve technology access on the border, facilitate communication among government law enforcement agencies, improve deportation speech, and ensure that deportations and other actions occur within the bounds of the law.
The Chilean president’s policies to improve the fight against illegal human and drug trafficking follow his appearance last weekend at the Shield of the Americas summit in Florida, hosted by President Donald Trump. Trump and Kast maintain a friendly relationship and Trump congratulated the president following his election. At the summit, the parties participating made an agreement to all approve the use of lethal force against drug traffickers.
“The heart of our agreement is an agreement to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks,” President Trump said at the event. “We will not tolerate the lawlessness in our hemisphere any longer.”
The parameters of cooperation for the Shield of the Americas countries are, however, expected to expand beyond fighting cartels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted that “while there is clearly a focus on security in our hemisphere, as you can see from our representation here in our cabinet from trade, to commerce, to energy to treasury – there’s also a focus very strongly on the opportunities to work together economically.”
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