The Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) confirmed this Friday that it had located 33 of the 64 Haitian children declared unlocatable by the Comptroller’s Officeafter an investigation into their income into the country in 2025 that the government of José Antonio Kast warned of as an irregular process.
The information was offered by the general of the PDI, Eduardo Cerna, in a press conference at the Palacio de La Moneda (seat of government), together with the Minister of Social Development, María Jesús Wulf, appointed by Kast to lead a working group inter-institutional “to expedite the search for information.”
“It is an articulated work, an intersectoral table and in relation to the Comptroller’s report, which refers to 64 minors who had not been located; of them we have already found 33 (children) who are living with binding families, fathers, mothers and siblings,” declared Cerna.
The Comptroller’s investigation indicates that, through various charter flights between January and October 2025and within the framework of family reunification in force in Chilean legislation, they entered the country 105 minors accompanied by at least 12 adults with whom they have no blood tiesnoting that the whereabouts of 64 of them were unknown.
Based on that report, the head of the National Migration Service (SERMIG), Frank Sauerbaum filed a complaint for alleged irregularities in the arrival of children and adolescents to Chile from Haiti, accusing an alleged case of trafficking of minors and supporting an estimate of 200 cases.
Cerna, however, stressed that the children “are living in their places, it is not that they are missing, lost or in regular income” and that they are working to corroborate “what already exists, which are the records with which they were delivered to the binding adults. The young people entered with their documentation; was verified.”
The official explained that, because the process was carried out on charter flights, Entry is processed at security booths differentiated where the documentation is reviewed and then an inspection officer reunites the minor with his family member, recording the information in a record.
“No minor, as they wanted to make it known, arrived at the airport, passed through and left,” he added, ruling out the possibility of unverified income.
Minister Wulf, for her part, stated that “although the immediate focus has been the 64 children and adolescents, we will reinforce the protocols and we will continue to advance in the coordination with the different organizations to consolidate the information and data available.”
Between 2022 and 2025, Chile authorized a total of 16,498 family reunification processes for Haitians, the majority involving minors, according to official figures.
The National Institute of Statistics (INE) estimated in its latest report on the foreign population that in Chile resides a total of 188,131 people from Haiti, constituting the fourth largest foreign community in the country and representing approximately 9.8% of the total migrant population.
The vast majority arrived on the wave immigration of 2016when Haitians could enter as tourists without a visa and later regularize their situation if they found work, something that changed starting in 2018.
