Hundreds or people remain stranded amid a migration crisis at the border between Chile and Peru, unable to cross into Peru in an effort to return to their home country of Venezuela.
The mostly Venezuelan migrants are seeking to cross into Peru to continue on to their home country but Peru isn’t allowing them to enter because they lack documents.
The migrants have been facing the inhospitable climate that characterizes the Atacama Desert, one of the driest on the planet, with extremely hot days and intensely cold nights. Some have improvised tents with blankets but they lack water and other basic services.
A group of migrants ran through the desert toward Peru, but they were turned back by Peruvian officers. Some women complained and demanded that the government of President Gabriel Boric provide a bus for them to travel to Venezuela.
Officials in Arica, the northern Chilean city that borders Peru and is around 2,000 kilometers from the capital of Santiago, declared a migration emergency Thursday.
A day earlier, the Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte, declared a state of emergency in Tacna, a town near the border with Chile, in order to preserve domestic order and contain the arrival of migrants.
Boluarte said she would push for a constitutional reform to “authorize the intervention of the armed forces in the border area.” Boric, for his part, already deployed troops to the border in late February to help stop the entry of migrants.
Amnesty International urged Peru and Chile to end what it called “the militarization” of the border.
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