At dawn today, police officers found a pregnant woman who fell into the water of the Colchane bogs. She would have entered Chile through an illegal passage after paying $90,000 to illegal people traffickers, also called “coyotes”, who abandoned her.
The woman, 30 years old and 5 months pregnant, was part of a caravan of people of Haitian nationality who had been trying to travel from Brazil to Mexico for 12 days. According to what she told the police, she paid $90,000 to the “coyotes” to transfer her from Chile to Peru, but they abandoned her in the Colchane bofedales.
The midwife of the rural emergency service of the local post, Romina Herrera, declared that “it is super common for people to pass by and for us to receive pregnant women in this place. At this time the patient is completely wet, because she fell. We are going to finish carrying out the treatment to start investigating and see what will happen later”.
The mayor of Colchane, Javier García, explained that “it is during the night that gangs of coyotes usually make irregular migrants pass, for large sums of money, from Bolivia to Chile, leaving them abandoned to their fate in the desert, exposed to low temperatures and to the dangers of a territory that they are unaware of. In this case, it is evident that due to the political problems in Peru, the coyotes use Chile as an alternative route for irregular migrants.”
The municipal health director, Yolanda Flores, explained that the constant irregular migrations continue to put local health services in tension due to the constant emergency care.
#Iquique Pregnant Haitian was abandoned by coyotes in Colchane. Carabineros rescued from the cold waters of the wetlands a Haitian woman who fell into the pools after entering Chile through an irregular passage at about 12:00 am today, January 26** pic.twitter.com/emp84hM1sa
— elsoldeiquique (@elsoldeiquique) January 26, 2023
