Around 700,000 Venezuelans live in Chile, roughly half of them without legal status, and many now fear the consequences of the election of far-right president José Antonio Kast (Partido Republicano), who won December's vote with 58 percent of the vote on promises to expel all undocumented migrants and launch a military 'Operation Border Shield' along the country's northern and eastern frontiers. Venezuelans already struggled to obtain residency under the previous left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, as authorities increasingly associated later waves of migrants with organised crime; those without papers are unable to access formal employment or proper housing, leaving families like that of Margarita — a Venezuelan mother of four living in a shantytown in the northern city of Arica — juggling informal jobs and preparing to flee by bus rather than risk deportation. Kast has yet to establish an immigration enforcement body comparable to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and analysts note the tension between his deportation pledges and his goal of cutting state spending, but the uncertainty alone has been enough to send a chill through Venezuela's migrant community across the country.