Chile moves hundreds of inmates to a new prison as President Kast ramps up security push

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- The Chilean government transferred nearly 300 high-risk inmates from around the country to a sprawling new prison on Thursday, as hard-line President José Antonio Kast seeks to regain momentum on his core campaign pledge to combat organized crime. Kast traveled to the recently opened La Laguna Prison, among Chile's biggest, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Chile's capital of Santiago, to oversee the transfer, which his government described as an effort to ease overcrowding in prisons and prevent incarcerated gang leaders from remotely running their criminal enterprises behind bars. Footage released by the government showed inmates packed into rows with bowed heads and shackled feet, recalling images from El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has made a point of broadcasting his security crackdown on social media. Bukele's mass incarceration campaign has sharply reduced violence but drawn allegations from human rights groups of arbitrary detention, abuse and the erosion of civil liberties. Like other right-wing presidential contenders across Latin America, most recently in Colombia and Peru, Kast has invoked Bukele as a model for his own promi...