Chile moves hundreds of inmates to new prison as president ups security push

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The Chilean government transferred nearly 300 high-risk inmates from around the country to a sprawling new prison on Thursday, as hard-line President José Antonio Kast seeks to regain momentum on his core campaign pledge to combat organized crime.

Kast traveled to the recently opened La Laguna Prison, among Chile’s biggest, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Chile’s capital of Santiago, to oversee the transfer, which his government described as an effort to ease overcrowding in prisons and prevent incarcerated gang leaders from remotely running their criminal enterprises behind bars.

Footage released by the government showed inmates packed into rows with bowed heads and shackled feet, recalling images from El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has made a point of broadcasting his security crackdown on social media.

Bukele’s mass incarceration campaign has sharply reduced violence but drawn allegations from human rights groups of arbitrary detention, abuse and the erosion of civil liberties.

Chile’s president invokes Bukele as model

Like other right-wing presidential contenders across Latin America, most recently in Colombia and Peru, Kast has invoked Bukele as a model for his own promises to fight organized crime.

While campaigning last year, Kast visited El Salvador to study Bukele’s security policies and tour the country’s notorious mega-prison where visitation, recreation and education are not allowed.

“It’s a way of sending criminals a clear message that things have changed: We are going to come after you, we are going to find you, you will be prosecuted and we are going to lock you up,” Kast said in a press conference about the transfer.

Kast’s office said 298 maximum-security prisoners were moved early Thursday to La Laguna from facilities around the country, including 40 alleged members of criminal organizations, nine of them gang leaders.

Hundreds more prisoners are slated to arrive at La Laguna in stages as the government moves to fill the facility to its expected capacity of 2,097 inmates across over a dozen units, including maximum-security wings. It’s equipped with 1,500 surveillance cameras, body scanners and technology designed to block cellphone signals.

The prison, billed as Chile’s most modern and secure facility, opened last year under Kast’s predecessor, left-wing President Gabriel Boric, and began receiving inmates months before Kast, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, took office.

Kast refocuses on security after initial stumbles

Kast’s bid to publicize the move comes as he seeks to make good on his flagship security pledges after a bumpy start.

“If there is one issue on which the public is demanding action from all of us, it is greater security,” Kast said Thursday. “And that is what we are delivering now: a secure transfer and a clear message to organized crime and terrorism.”

He fired his first security minister just over two months into his administration and has struggled to implement his core campaign pledge of rapidly deporting immigrants. So far, his government has deported about 878 of the estimated 300,000 immigrants in Chile without permission to be in the country. Another 7,501 immigrants left voluntarily during the first seven months of 2026.

With voters expressing frustration that Kast’s security policies have so far differed little from those under Boric, Kast reshuffled the Security Ministry in May and last week unveiled a major security package that would give the state broader authority to combat crime.

The proposals, many of them already before Congress, call for a permanent police presence in Chile’s most dangerous neighborhoods, tougher penalties for gang membership and a new state agency to seize and destroy assets linked to organized crime.

The legislation would also loosen the rules governing police use of force and change the constitution to make it easier to declare states of emergency in response to grave security threats.

Chile remains among the safest countries in Latin America, but a recent increase in kidnappings, extortion and drug trafficking — along with the expansion of transnational gangs such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua — has caused overcrowding in the country’s prisons and fueled public anxiety about organized crime that helped propel Kast to electoral victory last December.