Chile's newly elected far-right President José Antonio Kast carried out his administration's first deportation flight on Thursday, removing 40 irregular migrants aboard a Chilean Air Force Boeing 737 with stops in La Paz, Guayaquil and Bogotá. All those expelled held outstanding deportation orders for offences including violent robbery, drug trafficking or illegal weapons possession, and each was escorted by an officer from Chile's Investigative Police. Deputy Interior Minister Máximo Pavez called it "the first of many," signalling a significant escalation: the government has some 75,000 pending deportation orders and plans to complement air removals with land-based expulsions, while also halting a regularisation process for over 180,000 irregular migrants begun under the previous administration.