The criminalization of migration in Chile: Disruptions and continuities, before and after the pandemic

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the criminalization of migration in Chile, exploring the legal and policy changes taking place in both the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Beyond thoroughly scrutinizing these immigration enforcement changes, it also examines their underlying motivations, as well as their consequences and paradoxes. In this regard, the chapter explores legal and policy arrangements implemented in the 2010s, which gave shape to a markedly managerial model in which removal practices took centre stage, specifically focusing on the expeditious deportation of so-called “criminal aliens” - in a crimmigration fashion. In addition, the chapter examines recent changes in the field of immigration enforcement, which have resulted in the increasing consolidation of a punishment model, in which criminalized noncitizens are prevailingly incarcerated, rather than deported. Finally, the chapter reflects on the ambivalences surrounding migration control and shows the main challenges of the Chilean criminal justice system in dealing with criminalized noncitizens.