Scandal Over Missing Haitian Kids Spurs Tougher Migration Oversight in Chile

Article content

The Haitian population grew to more than 62,000 by 2017 from around 1,600 people in 2012, according to census data. The migration service now estimates the community at close to 190,000.

Article content

Creole-speaking Haitians, who often take low-wage jobs in agriculture and construction, usually struggle more than other migrant groups to assimilate in Spanish-speaking Chile, community members say.

Article content

“Being a migrant here in Chile is difficult. Imagine being Black and not speaking Spanish,” said Antoine.

Article content

Most arrived after Haiti’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake. Chile, alongside other countries, participated in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, a peacekeeping operation that was later tainted by controversies. In 2018, Chile created a family reunification visa for Haitians, then tightened the requirements in 2020, making it available only to Haitians with permanent residency. By then, the soaring arrivals were drawing political scrutiny, including by then-presidential hopeful Kast.

Article content

Between 2022 and 2025, Chile approved 16,498 Haitian reunification applications, most involving minors, according to Frank Sauerbaum, head of Chile’s national Migration Service. He blamed a 2024 memorandum relaxing documentation requirements for enabling what he has described as uncontrolled migration under Kast’s leftist predecessor Gabriel Boric. Luis Thayer, Boric’s migration director, has said the loosened rules took the Caribbean nation’s institutional collapse into account and aligned with Chile’s laws and constitution.

Article content

Article content

Migration authorities have since suspended more than 10,000 family reunification applications, according to Sauerbaum, after Chile withdrew its consul in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince in October 2025 to investigate possible irregularities related to a suspiciously high number of document legalizations.

Article content

The June “scandal,” which prompted authorities to declare that the missing children had to be found urgently, thrust Chile’s Haitian community into the national spotlight — but not in the way it had hoped for.

Article content

The episode was “reduced to a single narrative: Haitians, organ trafficking, child trafficking,” echoing US President Donald Trump’s vitriol, said Michel-Ange Joseph, a Haitian community leader who has lived in Chile for 12 years.

Article content

Stigmatizing narratives rarely stop at one country’s borders, warned Joseph, 32, an immigrant-rights advocate.

Article content

“This affects anyone carrying a Haitian passport. It also affects our mobility across the region and in other parts of the world,” she said, bemoaning what she described as a “scar” on the Haitian identity. “This is a wound that should be healed.”

Article content

Article content

For Zeballos, the former police officer, Chile’s clampdown could backfire.

Article content

“The case of the Haitian children should not be viewed as a uniquely Haitian issue or as an argument against migration,” he said. “The question, then, is not only how many children entered the country or where they are, but also whether our states have the capacity to protect them.”

Article content

Nowhere to Go

Article content

After the quake, many Haitian migrants fled to the US, where eligible arrivals could receive temporary protected status. For many, Chile was often a stopover.

Article content

“Chile is a transit country for many Haitians,” said Joseph. “Many are simply trying to save enough money to leave the country.”

Article content

The evidence of Chile’s transit status was laid bare in 2021, when dozens of Chilean residency cards were found discarded on the Mexican side of the US border. Zeballos said many Haitian migrants may have abandoned the documents out of fear they could undermine future US asylum claims.

Article content

Still, he argues, that might not have been the only reason. “What we saw was an ‘economy of expectations,’ in which intermediaries and smugglers sold Chile as a stepping stone to the United States or Europe, exploiting the hopes of vulnerable people,” Zeballos said.