ARICA, Chile—Out on the wide open plain on Chile’s northernmost coastline, dust billows in the cool breeze which sweeps across the pampa.

In front of a row of concrete markers tracing the border with Peru, two sandy-yellow Chilean military excavators crawl along a deep trench, digging three metres down before swinging sharply to dump bucketloads of earth into a rising embankment.

A few hundred yards across the pampa from where Chilean soldiers patrol the boundary, stern-faced, the Peruvian border police sit under wind-torn blue awnings, eyeing the Chileans warily.

This barrier is newly inaugurated far-right President José Antonio Kast’s answer to the migration crisis that propelled him to power in December’s runoff election, where he won 58% of the vote. It also echoes President Trump’s pledges to build a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border, a key element of his immigration agenda.

During the campaign, Kast regularly threatened the 336,000 migrants living illegally in Chile, according to official estimates, with expulsion.

So far, he has deported just 40 people on a single outbound flight.

“We want to use excavators to build a sovereign Chile… which has been undermined by illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and organized crime,” he declared on a visit to this frontier just five days after assuming the presidency.

Kast, an ultra-conservative Catholic father-of-nine, has made a career on the extreme fringes of Chilean politics with his hardline views. Over the last five years, he has made illegal immigration – and the public security fears which have accompanied it – his battleflag, drawing comparisons to President Trump.

“We have made 53.6% progress, which means about six kilometres in this area,” says Cristián Sayes, President Kast’s delegate in this, Chile’s northernmost administrative region.

“The ultimate goal is to have constant control of the border so that we can stop illegal migration once and for all, but also confront drug trafficking, smuggling, and human trafficking,” said Sayes.

This ditch will be 11 kilometres long. Another, higher up in the mountains, will stretch for seven kilometres, and further south on the border with Bolivia, two more ditches are being dug.

Tank traps dug during a time of heightened political tensions in the 1970s strafe the landscape either side of the highway, and a section of desert along from where the trench is being dug is still laid with anti-tank mines from the era.

In March, Kast flew up to Arica, the sleepy desert town on the border with Peru, to announce the initiation of his ‘border shield’ plan.

The plan aims to seal vulnerable stretches of the 1,200-kilometre border Chile shares with Peru and Bolivia across its three northernmost regions in the Atacama Desert.The first phase includes several short trench sections along the most exposed parts of the frontier. Surveillance equipment will follow in the next phase, while the original proposal also called for five-metre walls in some areas.

“In addition to ditches, fences and walls, there will be thermal and infrared cameras, sensors, radars and drones with facial recognition cameras – all operating 24 hours a day,” explained Sayes.

But the wave of illegal migration across this border may already be a thing of the past as illegal entries have been steadily declining.

“In 2024, we had around 2,460 attempts, but in 2025, there was a significant decrease to 1,746,” said Prefect Inspector José Contreras Hernández, the regional head of Chile’s investigative police force.

“The most significant increase we have seen is actually in attempts by people to leave or try to leave the national territory irregularly,” says Contreras Hernández, attributing the exodus to migration policies and the change of government.

Already in the first four months of this year, border patrols have thwarted nearly 500 attempts to leave the country illegally in Arica y Parinacota – compared to just 33 in the whole of 2024.

Sayes says that the border deterrents will be continuously reviewed: “This is a constant and dynamic job, we will have to keep an eye on where traffickers and contrabandists are crossing, and we will have to maintain the trench so that it doesn’t crumble or fill with sand.”

Already, two Bolivian citizens were detained on another section of the border trench for trying to fill in the ditch to make it passable.

Entering the country illegally is not a crime in Chile, and the Kast government has already sent two bills to congress which would criminalise illegal entry, as well as limit immigrants’ access to social security benefits.

Yet doubts remain over whether digging ditches along short stretches of Chile’s more than 4,800 miles of porous borders will do much to curb the flow of migrants, drugs, or contraband. And with desert winds already blowing sand back into the trenches, the question is no longer just how far this barrier will extend — but whether it will stop anyone at all.

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A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday dismissed criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego García, an immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia was charged last year with human smuggling after being returned to the U.S. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He didn’t face charges then, but the Justice Department reopened an investigation into the traffic stop after a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return from El Salvador.

In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw said the actions by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “taints the investigation with a vindictive motive.”

“The reopening of the closed HSI investigation is the source of the vindictiveness,” Crenshaw said, referring to Homeland Security Investigations, which conducts federal criminal probes.

Crenshaw said the government would not have prosecuted Abrego Garcia if not for his successful lawsuit challenging his deportation to El Salvador.

“Blanche’s now unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation to Abrego’s successful lawsuit taints the investigation with a vindictive motive,” Crenshaw said. “The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security called the decision “naked judicial activism.” The agency also said Abrego Garcia’s final order of removal stands, saying “this Salvadorian is not going to remain in our country.”

Abrego Garcia in a statement said, “Justice is a big word and an even bigger promise to fulfill; and I am grateful that today, justice has taken a step forward.”

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday said the U.S. will send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, stirring confusion following weeks of changing statements from Trump and his administration about reducing — not increasing — the American military footprint in Europe.

The Trump administration has said it was reducing levels in Europe by about 5,000 troops, and U.S. officials confirmed about 4,000 service members were no longer deploying to Poland. Trump’s social media announcement raises more uncertainty for European allies that have been blindsided by the changes as the administration has complained about NATO members not shouldering enough of the burden of their own defense and failing to do more to support the Iran war.

“Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Trump and the Pentagon have said in recent weeks that they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war.

Trump then told reporters at the beginning of the month that the U.S. would be “cutting a lot further than 5,000.”

As of last week, some 4,000 troops from the Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division were no longer en route to Poland. The Associated Press reported that the canceled deployment was part of an effort to comply with Trump’s order to reduce the number of troops in Europe. A deployment to Germany of personnel trained to fire long-range missiles also was halted.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike criticized the reductions as sending the wrong signal both to allies and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 4-year-old war in Ukraine.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said during a congressional hearing that he spoke with Polish officials and they were “blindsided.” He called the decision “reprehensible” and said it was “an embarrassment to our country what we just did to Poland.”

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Tuesday that it was “a temporary delay” of the deployment of U.S. forces to Poland, which he called a “model U.S. ally.” He said it was a result of the U.S. reducing the number of brigade combat teams assigned to Europe from four to three and indicated the Pentagon still needed to decide which troops to station where.

It was not clear whether that meant the brigade would resume its deployment to Poland, if additional troops on top of that rotational deployment could be added, or whether there would still be a drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe but from a different country. The Pentagon referred requests for comment to the White House, which did not immediately respond to messages seeking clarity.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby both spoke with with their Polish counterparts this week. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had said Wednesday that he was happy to hear “Washington’s declaration that Poland will be treated as it deserves.”

As of Tuesday, U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of both American and NATO forces in Europe, told reporters in Brussels that “it will be 5,000 troops coming out of Europe.”

Trump’s announcement came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on his way to Sweden to meet with his NATO counterparts, who have been questioning the Trump administration’s policies on reduced U.S. troop levels in Europe.

“There seems to be no process to deliberating policies like troop withdrawals and deployments at the top,” said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Georgia during the Obama and first Trump administrations and now teaches international relations at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Kelly said Rubio may have a tough time in explaining Trump’s wild swings to Europeans who are craving certainty and consistency even if they might disagree.

“These are not well thought out decisions,” Kelly said. “These are impulsive decisions based on Trump’s whims or what his advisors think are Trump’s whims.”

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