(Bloomberg) — During his first week in Santiago I prison, Marcelo was pleased that his fellow inmates gave him a phone so he could call his girlfriend and family.

Before the night was over, the same people were filming her screams as she was tortured and demanding people on her new registered contact list send money to stop it.

Marcelo says the incident is a result of the increasing number of foreign detainees bringing a more violent and exploitative prison culture to Chile.

Although most of those who stabbed and beat him were Chileans, Marcelo, 29, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, said “it was the foreign prisoners who were responsible.” “You didn’t see this. “It was completely against Chilean rules to call a prisoner’s family and blackmail them.”

Marcelo’s view that foreign influence is at the root of this violence is shared by many Chileans, 92% of whom think immigration worsens safety and security in the country, according to a LatAm Pulse poll by AtlasIntel and Bloomberg News. More than 95 percent of those surveyed in October think Chile should have more restrictive immigration laws. The concerns echo those in the region and even in the United States, where similar conversations are taking place during the presidential election season.

While Chileans like Marcelo are affected by the increased crime that comes with the arrival of immigrants in Chile, there is another reality: the newcomers themselves are the biggest victims of violence. Organized crime groups like Tren de Aragua, which has become the face of the phenomenon from Santiago to New York, often target immigrants who are vulnerable and find themselves in precarious economic conditions. The gang, formed in a Venezuelan prison in Chile a decade ago, was involved in the highly publicized murder of Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda.

Rising crime has consumed the government of leftist President Gabriel Boric, who is trying to build a legacy of fighting violence and drugs on the social security platform on which he campaigned.

The government has more than tripled its budget for fighting organized crime to $89 million since 2022. It created a new state attorney’s office and police department and is building high-security prisons. Prosecutors now order that any undocumented immigrant caught for a crime be detained before trial.

All of this is important for a country with almost no history of criminal gangs and where police once carried only pistols and used unarmored vehicles. Chile’s policing tactics are now beginning to mirror those of its regional neighbors, who are forced to break up cocaine labs in forests and patrol dangerous slums.

“The existence of organized crime in our country has shocked us, but it will not paralyze us,” Boric said earlier this year. “We will win this fight step by step”

Unexpected Arrival

The Venezuelan diaspora has been a gold mine for Tren de Aragua, which specializes in human trafficking. People pay gang members to smuggle them across the border into Chile, and some are forced to work for the group to pay off their debts. This leaves immigrants vulnerable to becoming the gang’s first victims.

It is undeniable that murders, violent crimes and drug seizures have increased in recent years. Last year local investigative police seized 30 tonnes of drugs, including cocaine and processed marijuana. This is higher than the 21 tons recorded in 2019.

According to data from the Undersecretariat for Crime Prevention, the number of murders in Chile reached 579 in the first half of the year, or 2.9 per 100,000 people. This is a 30 percent increase compared to 2019, but a 9 percent decrease compared to early 2023. More than 20 percent of murder victims this year were foreigners; this rate was more than 4 percent in 2020.

While the number of Chilean victims remains roughly the same, killings of Venezuelans (more than 700,000 of whom now live in Chile) are increasing rapidly. Authorities performed 73 autopsies last year on Venezuelans who died as a result of violence, compared with just three in 2019, according to the national forensic service center. The number of autopsies in Colombia will double to 60 in 2023.

Interior Minister Carolina Tohá noted that there is a sub-segment of extremely violent crimes in the homicide data and that “these crimes are generally more likely to involve foreign nationals because they are linked to the modus operandi of gangs that have migrated from elsewhere.” he said in an interview with La Tercera earlier this year.

In July, an alleged fight between two rival gangs resulted in the killing of five Venezuelans at a party near Santiago.

As the number of events increases, their complexity also increases.

Juan Pablo Pardo said, “We are now encountering crime scenes that we have not seen in the past, where a dead person with many bullet marks on his body, with his hands and feet tied, is probably in a different place than where he was killed.” Head of the Investigation Police Organized Crime Brigade.

This forced Chile to make its investigative methods more complex. The local prosecutor, criminal analysts and a psychologist now accompany the investigating police to the scene if there is any suggestion of gang involvement.

“Oftentimes psychologists get the most important information from the victim’s family,” said Tania Gajardo, deputy director of the prosecutor’s office’s unit specializing in organized crime. “In the context of organized crime, the victim is not a traditional victim. “They don’t trust the police, they don’t cooperate with the investigation.”

Gang Culture

Chile remains safer than most countries in the region. Only Uruguay, Argentina and Costa Rica appear to be in a better position in the 2024 Global Peace Index, which also includes security indicators among the measures.

However, according to a study by Ipsos, concerns about violence, crime and immigration are higher in Chile than in any other country in the world.

The number of foreigners in Chilean prisons has doubled in five years, reaching 14% of the total in 2023; 26% of this rate, which was 1.5% in 2018, consists of Venezuelans. Colombians and Bolivians represent about 28%, according to Chile’s data. The prison service known as the Gendarmerie.

The recent rise in xenophobia may risk worsening the challenges already faced by immigrants. Those without documents avoid going to the police when they are the victims of any attack or robbery. Some start working for gangs out of fear and because it always offers a source of income to those who have no other employment opportunities.

“The more xenophobic a country is, the more uncertain the situation of Venezuelans in a country, the more fertile the ground for the continued exploitation of Tren de Aragua,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime. “These are criminals of opportunity and they are blackmailing the Venezuelan diaspora. Members of Tren de Aragua are parasites on Venezuelan society.”

Fight Against

One of the main challenges facing Chile is that Tren de Aragua’s intellectual leaders are elsewhere, making it difficult to map the chain of command. There are also splinter groups that claim to have or have close ties to Tren de Aragua.

According to organized crime consultant and former police intelligence officer Pablo Zeballos, “Latin America is experiencing a franchise system in which criminals pay to use the name of the most ruthless gang.” “The best brand in the region is brutality.”

It is difficult to determine whether Chile won the war, but it did achieve some victories. While the police arrested two prominent leaders of Tren de Aragua, they requested the extradition of Larry Changa, one of the founders of the gang, who was captured in Colombia.

“I’m pretty impressed with the Chilean authorities and I think they’re doing the right thing,” McDermott said. “It’s a steep learning curve, but the fact that Larry Changa is training with a runner from Chile in 2022 shows that he feels the risk of being caught here is very high.”

Moreover, according to prosecutor Gajardo, the increase in murders may be a sign of the gangs’ weakness, not their strength.

“Given our containment efforts, Tren de Aragua cells were left leaderless, resulting in disorganization,” he said. “Killings between rival gangs mean they cannot control territory. “When everything calms down, it means they took over the territories and the state allowed it.”

However, this may be little consolation to communities devastated by the rise in organized crime.

Next Destination

The northern city of Antofagasta is turning into a battleground between foreign gangs fighting over control of territory.

Its easy access to the Pacific Ocean, the capital Santiago, and its proximity to the borders of Bolivia and Peru have long made it a hub for Colombian gangs involved in drug trafficking.

According to advisor Zeballos, Tren de Aragua is now preparing to fight for Antofagasta after expanding into other northern cities such as Iquique and Arica. “A very violent future is predicted in Antofagasta.”

Pedro Araya, a native of the city and regional senator, says that this place is cursed due to both its geographical location and mineral wealth. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and the Antofagasta region is at the heart of the sector, with more than $17 billion worth of projects to be implemented by 2032.

“This means a greater influx of people into the region, from mine workers to criminals looking to seize new economic opportunities,” Araya said. “There is the potential for a complete loss of control of the northern region.”

First Priority

As Chile arrests more gang members, the race is on to prevent the prison system from becoming a new command core for organized crime. Preventing corruption will be an important part of this effort.

“The criminal organization and corruption in the state are two sides of the same coin,” said judge Fernando Guzman, who regularly visits Santiago I. “It is impossible to build a powerful criminal organization with significant profitability without an alliance with some state institutions.”

There were some isolated cases of corruption among the police force and guards.

President Boric reiterated that public safety will be the main priority for next year when announcing the country’s budget proposal on September 29. It will spend an extra $30 million in 2025 just to fight organized crime in prisons.

“Prisons have not become just schools of crime,” Guzman said. “They are also a source of funding and recruitment for organized crime.”

Time will tell what this means for prisoners like Marcelo.

After the attack, he was able to get medical help by telling the guards that he had accidentally cut his arm with a canister. Once he was away from the cell block he was able to report what happened.

Ultimately, Marcelo was transferred to a different cell for his own safety and then placed under house arrest; But that was before his girlfriend sent more than $100 to the attackers. The prosecutor’s request for 10 years in prison, the harshest possible sentence for drug trafficking, is awaiting a hearing for December.

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