Like other right wing presidents in Latin America (and beyond), José Antonio Kast won the presidency on one major issue: security. His campaign centered on the idea that Chile had become unsafe, the incumbent government had failed to fight insecurity and only a firm hand could restore order. Now six months into his mandate, the president is attempting to translate this into legislation. However his initiative has faced structural constraints (and critics) that makes it harder to implement.

Yesterday, just one week after revealing the details of a long awaited flagship security reform, the president announced he was putting it on pause to allow for renegotiation. The move revealed the uncomfortable situation the government had put itself in: several members from Kast’s own coalition had publicly declared the reform unacceptable.

Evópoli senator Luciano Cruz-Coke (center-right) called it “illiberal” and security commission president Karim Bianchi (independent) stated that he would not vote for this reform. Even on the far right, Johannes Kaiser questioned the relevance of some measures included in this reform. A Cadem poll published this past weekend found that 51% of Chileans believed the government should withdraw the project and seek broader consensus.

Taking a step back on a reform that overreached

The core of the controversial proposal formulated by José Antonio Kast was a new constitutional State of Public Security Exception (or State of Exception). In practical terms, the president would have the power to deploy security forces for up to 240 days without congressional approval. Critics from across the political spectrum described the measure as an unprecedented concentration of executive power in peacetime. The comparison to the dictatorship era was easy to make. Analysts questioned the magnitude of this proposal that goes further in some of its dispositions than the actual State of Assembly, an existing constitutional disposition that can be activated in case of external military conflict.

In light of these critics, José Antonio Kast signalled yesterday the government would scale back significantly. Options under discussion include reducing the State of Exception to 30 days with mandatory congressional renewal, and removing the provision allowing the government to strip social benefits from persons associated with criminal organisations. Legislative attention will shift to proposals that carry broader support such as the Rules on Use of Force and an updated anti-barricade law.

Beyond the legislative process, this controversy is a political setback for José Antonio Kast. The president does not have a strong majority in Congress1 and must generate consensus to pass his flagship reforms. For example, the “megarreforma” economic bill passed the Senate by just three votes in June after long negotiations with different center-right and center-left parties. The way this security reform was laid out shows either a lack of preparation or a bold “door-in-the-face” strategy. In an interview to Radio Infinita yesterday, the president tried to play down the critics stating that there was always room for debate regarding the reform and that this was part of a normal legislative process.

The security picture: real but relative

The political frustration that brought Kast to power reflects a genuine shift in Chile’s safety landscape. The homicide rate rose by 33% between 2018 and 2024, from 4.5 to 6.0 per 100,000 inhabitants, with a peak of nearly 7 per 100,000 in 2022. In 2024, 1,207 homicides were recorded, an average of 3.3 per day. However this represented a 4.8% decline from 2023’s figures. In 2025, preliminary figures show a slight decline as well.

Context matters: Chile and Argentina still register the lowest homicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ecuador went from 5 to 40 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants between 2015 and 2023. Venezuela and Honduras remain above 30. Chile’s rate of 6.0 would be unremarkable in most of the region, and well below the levels of Mexico, Brazil or Colombia.

However, up until 2015, Chile’s homicide rate hovered between 2.0 and 3.0, making the country probably the safest in Latin America. The recent trajectory over the past ten years has been deeply unsettling for the Chilean public and their perception of insecurity. Almost everyone in Chile, regardless of their political affinity, admits the security situation has deteriorated rapidly those past years. A shift that feels dramatic for many Chileans. In 2025, Chileans’ perception of security was among the lowest in the world2.

The deterioration is not uniform geographically. The regions of Arica and Tarapaca in the far north register the highest homicide rates in the country. This reflects the irregular migration flows, drug trafficking routes and the presence of organised criminal networks near the Bolivian and Peruvian borders. In the capital, Santiago, the rate is elevated but still lower than national peak regions.

Tren de Aragua’s presence in Chile

What distinguishes Chile’s current security challenge is the presence of organised transnational crime and especially the Tren de Aragua. Originally a Venezuelan prison gang, the organisation has established a significant presence in Santiago and northern Chile, operating in extortion, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation and money laundering.

There are speculations around the actual influence of the Tren de Aragua in Chile3 but it seems the organisation has penetrated into the country’s legitimate institutions. Earlier this year a senior Banco Santander executive was arrested, accused of being implicated in Tren de Aragua’s financial network, helping launder an estimated $85 million between 2022 and 2025.

For Chilean security forces, organized crime is a new phenomenon and presents new challenges. Fighting the Tren de Aragua organisation is not like fighting conventional crime. It is an organisation with a structured hierarchy, cross-border operational capacity, and, as demonstrated, the ability to corrupt local institutions. The government has made it a primary target but Chile’s legislative arsenal lacks updated laws on criminal association and asset confiscation. These are precisely key measures that would deserve more attention in a congressional debate.

Unfortunately, the growing presence of Tren de Aragua in Chile has fostered the emergence of local criminal organisations. Chilean authorities recently opened an investigation on “Los 4 Fanaticos”, a Chilean cartel (supposedly the first in Chile) formed by 4 local criminal organisations. Chile has more than 30 free trade agreements and has developed efficient and modern export infrastructures — an attractive feature for drug cartels who want to ship production.

The government’s plans on security

Beyond the legislative front, Kast’s government has initiated several operational tracks. By mid-July 2026, Chile had conducted seven deportation flights, expelling a total of 1,174 irregular migrants. A figure that exceeds full-year deportation numbers of the past three years but is far from campaign promises. During his campaign, Jose Antonio Kast had announced he would expel more than 300,000 irregular migrants on the first day of his mandate, arguing that irregular migration was the source of increasing insecurity. He recently described this promise as a “metaphor” while the government acknowledged the logistics of such mass deportation had proven legally and operationally impossible4.

The government recently launched Plan Cancerbero in a dramatic showdown that saw almost 200 high priority inmates being transferred from several prisons to a new high security prison in Talca. Plan Cancerbero aims at implementing stricter detention measures for high priority inmates. The government also plans on expanding prison capacity, through the modernization of existing prisons and the construction of new ones. Plans to reinforce border infrastructures, especially in the Northern regions, are also in the works. On the ground, José Antonio Kast wants to push security deployment to 50 targeted priority neighbourhoods in the country.

Underneath all these initiatives lies a structural constraint: Chile has approximately 230 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, below the international average of 280 and well below comparable OECD countries. Spain has 530 police per 100,000, Italy 460, France 310. Chile sits above the UN minimum of 180 but meaningfully below the level that most security analysts associate with effective urban crime prevention. Rather than expanding the police force — which requires recruiting and training and does not sit well with the government’s commitment to cut spending — José Antonio Kast has suggested a reorganization of police forces with the creation of special task forces to better coordinate the fight against criminal organisations and dedicated police operations in the most exposed areas.

Perspectives

The security reform’s pause is probably just a temporary setback for the government which has indidcated it will return with a modified version. But there’s a feeling the government has already used one strike on this agenda and is now already under pressure to reformulate a proposal that can attract cross-party support.

In the longer term, the real challenges for Kast’s (and Chile’s) security agenda are more operational: whether the government can expell more efficiently irregular migrants and whether Plan Cancerbero and its targeted approach can produce real reductions in crime. In any case, these are long term targets that will begin to be measurable in 2027 or even 2028.

Chile is not an isolated case in the region when it comes security. Elsewhere in Latin America, governments are moving toward harder security postures. Peru’s new president Keiko Fujimori has deployed the military to prisons and border zones. Since the inauguration of the CECOT in El Salvador, 15 mega-prisons have been proposed across Latin America. None has yet replicated El Salvador’s results.

The United States is also moving in this direction. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced earlier this month that Washington is evaluating ground operations in Latin America as part of its anti-narcotics campaigns. Chile is a member of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C) and the Shield of the Americas. Now that Trump has a potential political ally in Chile with José Antonio Kast5, closer US security cooperation on organised crime could be a feature of the bilatera agenda in the coming months.