Chile's MAGA-inspired border control: NPR update

Key Takeaways

• Chile's MAGA-inspired border control toggle caption John Bartlett/NPR 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.