This is what it sounded like in the northern Chilean city of Enquique last week.

Video on social media shows anti-immigration protesters clustered around a large fire in

a town square.

They're throwing clothes into that fire and tense bicycles, baby strollers.

These things, they belong to migrants who mainly were from Venezuela and had been living

in the city illegally.

It was very violent and very sad to watch.

Ignacio Gallegos is a journalist in Chile's capital Santiago.

He told MPR these violent demonstrations reflect a change in Chile over the last few years,

more anti-immigration rhetoric from the government.

The government has been pushing a policy of return home and at the same time they have

been pursuing people who come into the country legally through raids and such.

Gallegos says it's all added up to this.

A stronger sense of the Chilean community no longer wants so many immigrants.

All that coupled with an economy devastated by the pandemic helps explain why so many

immigrants in Chile have been fleeing the country, including people originally from Haiti,

some of whom wound up at the US Southern border last week, only to be deported back to

their home country by the Biden administration.

But more are on the way, and as Juan Haitian and Chile told MPR this week, people don't

have any other option.

Consider this, the plight of Haitian migrants is not over, and we're learning more about

the roots of the problem.

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